Good Omens

Our Professioune.[Dr Thos. De­vice, 1835]

Newt read it again. There was a sound outside like a sheet of corru­gated iron pinwheeling across the garden, which was exactly what it was.

"Is this supposed to mean," he said slowly, "that we're supposed to become an, an item?That Agnes, what a joker."

Courting is always difficult when the one being courted has an elderly female relative in the house; they tend to mutter or cackle or bum cigarettes or, in the worst cases, get out the family photograph album, an act of aggression in the sex war which ought to be banned by a Geneva Convention. It's much worse when the relative has been dead for three hundred years. Newt had indeed been harboring certain thoughts about Anathema; not just harboring them, in fact, but dry‑docking them, refit­ting them, giving them a good coat of paint and scraping the barnacles off their bottom. But the idea of Agnes's second‑sight boring into the back of his neck sloshed over his libido like a bucketful of cold water.

He had even been entertaining the idea of inviting her out for a meal, but he hated the idea of some Cromwellian witch sitting in her cottage three centuries earlier and watching him eat.

He was in the mood in which people burned witches. His life was quite complicated enough without it being manipulated across the centu­ries by some crazed old woman.

A thump in the grate sounded like part of the chimney stack com­ing down.

And then he thought: my life isn't complicated at all. I can see it as clearly as Agnes might. It stretches all the way to early retirement, a whip­round from the people in the office, a bright little neat flat somewhere, a neat little empty death. Except now I'm going to die under the ruins of a cottage during what might just possibly be the end of the world.

The Recording Angel won't have any trouble with me, my life must have been dittoes on every page for years. I mean, what have I ever really done? I've never robbed a bank. I've never had a parking ticket. I've never eaten Thai food‑

Somewhere another window caved in, with a merry tinkle of break­ing glass. Anathema put her arms around him, with a sigh which really didn't sound disappointed at all.

I've never been to America. Or France, because Calais doesn't re­ally count. I've never learned to play a musical instrument.

The radio died as the power lines finally gave up.

He buried his face in her hair.

I've never‑

– – -

There was a pingingsound.

Shadwell, who had been bringing the Army pay books up to date, looked up in the middle of signing for Witchfinder Lance‑Corporal Smith.

It took him a while to notice that the gleam of Newt's pin was no longer on the map.

He got down from his stool, muttering under his breath, and searched around on the floor until he found it. He gave it another polish and put it back in Tadfield.

He was just signing for Witchfinder Private Table, who got an extra tuppence a year hay allowance, when there was another ping.

He retrieved the pin, glared at it suspiciously, and pushed it so hard into the map that the plaster behind it gave way. Then he went back to the ledgers.

There was a ping.

This time the pin was several feet from the wall. Shadwell picked it up, examined its point, pushed it into the map, and watched it.

After about five seconds it shot past his ear.

He scrabbled for it on the floor, replaced it on the map, and held it there.

It moved under his hand. He leaned his weight on it.

A tiny thread of smoke curled out of the map. Shadwell gave a whimper and sucked his fingers as the red‑hot pin ricocheted off the oppo­site wall and smashed a window. It didn't want to be in Tadfield.

Ten seconds later Shadwell was rummaging through the WA's cash box, which yielded a handful of copper, a ten‑shilling note, and a small counterfeit coin from the reign of James I. Regardless of personal safety, he rummaged in his own pockets. The results of the trawl, even with his pensioners' concessionary travel pass taken into consideration, were barely enough to get him out of the house, let alone to Tadfield.

The only other people he knew who had money were Mr. Rajit and Madame Tracy. As far as the Rajits were concerned, the question of seven weeks' rent would probably crop up in any financial discussion he insti­gated at this point, and as for Madame Tracy, who'd only be too willing to lend him a handful of used tenners . . .

"I'll be swaggit if I'll tak the Wages o' Sin frae the painted jezebel," he said.

Which left no one else.

Save one.

The southern pansy.

They'd each been here, just once, spending as little time as possible in the room and, in Aziraphale's case, trying not to touch any flat surface. The other one, the flash southern bastard in the sunglasses, was‑Shadwell suspected‑not someone he ought to offend. In Shadwell's simple world, anyone in sunglasses who wasn't actually on a beach was probably a crimi­nal. He suspected that Crowley was from the Mafia, or the underworld, although he would have been surprised how right he nearly was. But the soft one in the camelhair coat was a different matter, and he'd risked trailing him back to his base once, and he could remember the way. He thought Aziraphale was a Russian spy. He could ask him for money. Threaten him a bit.

It was terribly risky.

Shadwell pulled himself together. Even now young Newt might be suffering unimaginable tortures at the hands of the daughters o' night and he, Shadwell, had sent him.

"We canna leave our people in there," he said, and put on his thin overcoat and shapeless hat and went out into the street.

The weather seemed to be blowing up a bit.

* * * * *

A ziraphale was dithering. He'd been dithering for some twelve hours. His nerves, he would have said, were all over the place. He walked around the shop, picking up bits of paper and dropping them again, fiddling with pens.

He ought to tell Crowley.

No, he didn't. He wantedto tell Crowley. He oughtto tell Heaven. He was an angel, after all. You had to do the right thing. It was built‑in. You see a wile, you thwart. Crowley had put his finger on it, right enough. He ought to have told Heaven right from the start.

But he'd known him for thousands of years. They got along. They nearly understood one another. He sometimes suspected they had far more in common with one another than with their respective superiors. They both liked the world, for one thing, rather than viewing it simply as the board on which the cosmic game of chess was being played.

Well, of course, that was it. That was the answer, staring him in the face. It'd be true to the spiritof his pact with Crowley if he tipped Heaven the wink, and then they could quietly do something about the child, al­though nothing too bad of course because we were all God's creatures when you got down to it, even people like Crowley and the Antichrist, and the world would be saved and there wouldn't have to be all that Armaged­don business, which would do nobody any good anyway, because everyone knewHeaven would win in the end, and Crowley would be bound to understand.

Yes. And then everything would be all right.

There was a knock at the shop door, despite the CLOSED sign. He ignored it.

Getting in touch with Heaven for two‑way communications was far more difficult for Aziraphale than it is for humans, who don't expect an answer and in nearly all cases would be rather surprised to get one.

He pushed aside the paper‑laden desk and rolled up the threadbare bookshop carpet. There was a small circle chalked on the floorboards underneath, surrounded by suitable passages from the Cabala. The angel lit seven candles, which he placed ritually at certain points around the circle. Then he lit some incense, which was not necessary but did make the place smell nice.

And then he stood in the circle and said the Words.

Nothing happened.

He said the Words again.

Eventually a bright blue shaft of light shot down from the ceiling and filled the circle.

A well‑educated voice said, "Well?"

"It's me, Aziraphale."

"We know," said the voice.

"I've got great news! I've located the Antichrist! I can give you his address and everything!"

There was a pause. The blue light flickered.

"Well?" it said again.

"But, d'you see, you can ki‑man stop it all happening! In the nick of time! You've only got a few hours! You can stop it all and there needn't be the war and everyone will be saved!"

He beamed madly into the light.

"Yes?" said the voice.

"Yes, he's in a place called Lower Tadfield, and the address‑"

"Well done," said the voice, in flat, dead tones.

"There doesn't have to be any of that business with one third of the seas turning to blood or anything," said Aziraphale happily.

When it came, the voice sounded slightly annoyed.

"Why not?" it said.

Aziraphale felt an icy pit opening under his enthusiasm, and tried to pretend it wasn't happening.

He plunged on: "Well, you can simply make sure that‑"

"We will win,Aziraphale."

"Yes, but‑"

"The forces of darkness must be beaten.You seem to be under a misapprehension. The point is not to avoid the war, it is to win it. We have been waiting a long time, Aziraphale."

Aziraphale felt the coldness envelop his mind. He opened his mouth to say, "Do you think perhaps it would be a good idea not to hold the war on Earth?" and changed his mind.

"I see," he said grimly. There was a scraping near the door, and if Aziraphale had been looking in that direction he would have seen a bat­tered felt hat trying to peer over the fanlight.

"This is not to say you have not performed well," said the voice. "You will receive a commendation. Well done."

"Thank you," said Aziraphale. The bitterness in his voice would have soured milk. "I'd forgotten about ineffability, obviously."

"We thought you had."

"May I ask," said the angel, "to whom have I been speaking?"

The voice said, "We are the Metatron." ^[31]

"Oh, yes. Of course. Oh. Well. Thank you very much. Thank you."

Behind him the letterbox tilted open, revealing a pair of eyes.

"One other thing," said the voice. "You will of course be joining us, won't you?"

"Well, er, of course it has been simply ages since I've held a flaming sword‑" Aziraphale began.

"Yes, we recall," said the voice. "You will have a lot of opportunity to relearn."

"Ah. Hmm. What sort of initiating event will precipitate the war?" said Aziraphale.

"We thought a mufti‑nation nuclear exchange would be a nice start."

"Oh. Yes. Very imaginative." Aziraphale's voice was flat and hopeless.

"Good. We will expect you directly, then," said the voice.

"Ah. Well. I'll just clear up a few business matters, shall I?" said Aziraphale desperately.

"There hardly seems to be any necessity," said the Metatron.

Aziraphale drew himself up. "I really feel that probity, not to say morality, demands that as a reputable businessman I should‑"

"Yes, yes," said the Metatron, a shade testily. "Point taken. We shall await you, then."

The light faded, but did not quite vanish. They're leaving the line open, Aziraphale thought. I'm not getting out of this one.

"Hallo?" he said softly, "Anyone still there?"

There was silence.

Very carefully, he stepped over the circle and crept to the tele­phone. He opened his notebook and dialed another number.

After four rings it gave a little cough, followed by a pause, and then a voice which sounded so laid back you could put a carpet on it said, "Hi. This is Anthony Crowley. Uh. I‑"

"Crowley!" Aziraphale tried to hiss and shout at the same time, "Listen! I haven't got much time! The‑"

"‑probably not in right now, or asleep, and busy, or something, but –"

"Shutup! Listen! It was in Tadfield! It's all in that book! You've got to stop‑"

"‑after the tone and I'll get right back to you. Chow."

"I want to talk to you now‑"

BeeeEEeeeEEeee

"Stop making noises! It's in Tadfield! That was what I was sensing! You must go there and‑"

He took the phone away from his mouth.

"Bugger!" he said. It was the first time he'd sworn in more than four thousand years.

Hold on. The demon had another line, didn't he? He was that kind of person. Aziraphale fumbled in the book, nearly dropping it on the floor. They would be getting impatient soon.

He found the other number. He dialed it. It was answered almost immediately, at the same time as the shop's bell tingled gently.

Crowley's voice, getting louder as it neared the mouthpiece, said, "‑really mean it. Hallo?"

"Crowley, it's me!"

"Ngh." The voice was horribly noncommittal. Even in his present state, Aziraphale sensed trouble.

"Are you alone?" he said cautiously.

"Nuh. Got an old friend here."

"Listen‑1"

"Awa' we ye, ye spawn o' hell!"

Very slowly, Aziraphale turned around.

– – -

Shadwell was trembling with excitement. He'd seen it all. He'd heard it all. He hadn't understood any of it, but he knew what people did with circles and candlesticks and incense. He knew that all right. He'd seen The Devil Rides Outfifteen times, sixteen times if you included the time he'd been thrown out of the cinema for shouting his unflattering opinions of amateur witchfinder Christopher Lee.

The buggers were using him. They'd been making fools out o' the glorious traditions o' the Army.

"I'll have ye, ye evil bastard!" he shouted, advancing like a moth­eaten avenging angel. "I ken what ye be about, cumin' up here and seducin' wimmen to do yer evil will!"

"I think perhaps you've got the wrong shop," said Aziraphale. "I'll call back later," he told the receiver, and hung up.

"I could see what yer were about," snarled Shadwell. There were flecks of foam around his mouth. He was more angry than he could ever remember.

"Er, things are not what they seem‑" Aziraphale began, aware even as he said it that as conversational gambits went it lacked a certain polish.

"I bet they ain't!" said Shadwell triumphantly.

"No, I mean‑"

Without taking his eyes off the angel, Shadwell shuffled backwards and grabbed the shop door, slamming it hard so that the bell jangled.

"Bell," he said.

He grabbed The Nice and Accurate Propheciesand thumped it down heavily on the table.

"Book, " he snarled.

He fumbled in his pocket and produced his trusty Ronson.

"Practically candle!" he shouted, and began to advance.

In his path, the circle glowed with a faint blue light.

"Er," said Aziraphale, "I think it might not be a very good idea to-"

Shadwell wasn't listening. "By the powers invested in me by virtue o' my office o' Witchfinder," he intoned, "I charge ye to quit from this place‑"

"You see, the circle‑"

"‑and return henceforth to the place from which ye came, pausin' not to‑"

"‑it would really be unwise for a human to set foot in it without-"

"‑and deliver us frae evil-"

"Keep out of the circle, you stupid man!"

"‑never to come again to vex‑"

"Yes, yes, but pleasekeep out of‑"

Aziraphale ran toward Shadwell, waving his hands urgently.

"‑returning NAE MORE!" Shadwell finished. He pointed a vengeful, black‑nailed finger.

Aziraphale looked down at his feet, and swore for the second time in five minutes. He'd stepped into the circle.

"Oh, fuck," he said.

There was a melodious twang, and the blue glow vanished. So did Aziraphale.

Thirty seconds went by. Shadwell didn't move. Then, with a trem­bling left hand, he reached up and carefully lowered his right hand.

"Hallo?" he said. "Hallo?"

No one answered.

Shadwell shivered. Then, with his hand held out in front of him like a gun that he didn't dare fire and didn't know how to unload, he stepped out into the street, letting the door slam behind him.

It shook the floor. One of Aziraphale's candles fell over, spilling burning wax across the old, dry wood.

* * * * *

C rowley's London flat was the epitome of style. It was everything that a flat should be: spacious, white, elegantly furnished, and with that designer unlived‑in look that only comes from not being lived in.

This is because Crowley did not live there.

It was simply the place he went back to, at the end of the day, when he was in London. The beds were always made; the fridge was always stocked with gourmet food that never went off (that was why Crowley had a fridge, after all), and for that matter the fridge never needed to be de­frosted, or even plugged in.

The lounge contained a huge television, a white leather sofa, a video and a laserdisc player, an ansaphone, two telephones‑the an­saphone line, and the private line (a number so far undiscovered by the legions of telephone salesmen who persisted in trying to sell Crowley double glazing, which he already had, or life insurance, which he didn't need)‑and a square matte black sound system, the kind so exquisitely engineered that it just has the on‑off switch and the volume control. The only sound equipment Crowley had overlooked was speakers; he'd forgot­ten about them. Not that it made any difference. The sound reproduction was quite perfect anyway.

There was an unconnected fax machine with the intelligence of a computer and a computer with the intelligence of a retarded ant. Never­theless, Crowley upgraded it every few months, because a sleek computer was the sort of thing Crowley felt that the sort of human he tried to be would have. This one was like a Porsche with a screen. The manuals were still in their transparent wrapping. ^[32]

In fact the only things in the flat Crowley devoted any personal attention to were the houseplants. They were huge and green and glorious, with shiny, healthy, lustrous leaves.

This was because, once a week, Crowley went around the flat with a green plastic plant mister, spraying the leaves, and talking to the plants.

He had heard about talking to plants in the early seventies, on Radio Four, and thought it an excellent idea. Although talking isperhaps the wrong word for what Crowley did.

What he did was put the fear of God into them.

More precisely, the fear of Crowley.

In addition to which, every couple of months Crowley would pick out a plant that was growing too slowly, or succumbing to leaf‑wilt or browning, or just didn't look quite as good as the others, and he would carry it around to all the other plants. "Say goodbye to your friend," he'd say to them. "He just couldn't cut it . . ."

Then he would leave the flat with the offending plant, and return an hour or so later with a large, empty flower pot, which he would leave somewhere conspicuously around the flat.

The plants were the most luxurious, verdant, and beautiful in Lon­don. Also the most terrified.

The lounge was lit by spotlights and white neon tubes, of the kind one casually props against a chair or a corner.

The only wall decoration was a framed drawing‑the cartoon for the Mona Lisa,Leonardo da Vinci's original sketch. Crowley had bought it from the artist one hot afternoon in Florence, and felt it was superior to the final painting. ^[33]

Crowley had a bedroom, and a kitchen, and an office, and a lounge, and a toilet: each room forever clean and perfect.

He had spent an uncomfortable time in each of these rooms, during the long wait for the End of the world.

He had phoned his operatives in the Witchfinder Army again, to try to get news, but his contact, Sergeant Shadwell, had just gone out, and the dimwitted receptionist seemed unable to grasp that he was willing to talk to any of the others.

"Mr. Pulsifer is out too, love," she told him. "He went down to Tadfield this morning. On a mission."

"I'll speak to anyone," Crowley had explained.

"I'll tell Mr. Shadwell that," she had said, "when he gets back. Now if you don't mind, it's one of my mornings, and I can't leave my gentleman like that for long or he'll catch his death. And at two I've got Mrs. Ormerod and Mr. Scroggie and young Julia coming over for a sitting, and there's the place to clean and all beforehand. But I'll give Mr. Shad­well your message."

Crowley gave up. He tried to read a novel, but couldn't concen­trate. He tried to sort his CDs into alphabetical order, but gave up when he discovered they already were in alphabetical order, as was his bookcase, and his collection of Soul Music. ^[34]

Eventually he settled down on the white leather sofa and gestured on the television.

"Reports are coming in," said a worried newscaster, "uh, reports are, well, nobody seems to know what's going on, but reports available to us would seem to, uh, indicate an increase in international tensions that would have undoubtedly been viewed as impossible this time last week when, er, everyone seemed to be getting on so nicely. Er.

"This would seem at least partly due to the spate of unusual events which have occurred over the last few days.

"Off the coast of Japan-" CROWLEY?

"Yes," admitted Crowley.

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON, CROWLEY? WHAT EXACTLY HAVE YOU BEEN DOING?

"How do you mean?" Crowley asked, although he already knew.

THE BOY CALLED WARLOCK. WE HAVE BROUGHT HIM TO THE FIELDS OF MEGGIDO. THE DOG IS NOT WITH HIM. THE CHILD KNOWS NOTHINGOF THE GREAT WAR. HE IS NOT OUR MAS­TER'S SON.

"Ah," said Crowley.

IS THAT ALL YOU CAN SAY, CROWLEY? OUR TROOPS ARE AS­SEMBLED, THE FOUR BEASTS HAVE BEGUN TO RIDE‑BUT WHERE ARE THEY RIDING TO? SOMETHING HAS GONE WRONG, CROWLEY AND IT IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY. AND, IN ALL PROBABILITY, YOUR FAULT. WE TRUST YOU HAYS A PER­FECTLY REASONABLE EXPLANATION FOR ALL THIS . . .

"Oh yes," agreed Crowley, readily. "Perfectly reasonable."

. . . BECAUSE YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE YOUR CHANCE TO EX­PLAIN IT ALL TO US YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE ALL THE TIME

THERE IS TO EXPLAIN. AND WE WILL LISTEN WITH GREAT INTEREST TO EVERYTHING YOU HAVE TO SAY. AND YOUR CON­VERSATION. AND THE CIRCUMSTANCES THAT WILL ACCOM­PANY IT, WILL PROVIDE A SOURCE OF ENTERTAINMENT AND PLEASURE FOR ALL THE DAMNED OF HELL, CROWLEY BE­CAUSE NO MATTER HOW RACKED WITH TORMENT, NO MAT­TER WHAT AGONIES THE LOWEST OF THE DAMNED ARE SUF­FERING, CROWLEY, YOU WILL HAVE IT WORSE‑

With a gesture, Crowley turned the set off.

The dull gray‑green screen continued enunciating; the silence formed itself into words.

DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT TRYING TO ESCAPE US, CROWLEY THERE IS NO ESCAPE. STAY WHERE YOU ARE. YOU WILL BE . . . COLLECTED . . .

Crowley went to the window and looked out. Something black and car‑shaped was moving slowly down the street toward him. It was car­-shaped enough to fool the casual observer. Crowley, who was observing very carefully, noticed that not only were the wheels not going round, but they weren't even attached to the car. It was slowing down as it passed each house; Crowley assumed that the car's passengers (neither of them would be driving; neither of them knew how) were peering out at the house numbers.

He had a little time. Crowley went into the kitchen, and got a plastic bucket from under the sink. Then he went back into the lounge.

The Infernal Authorities had ceased communicating. Crowley turned the television to the wall, just in case.

He walked over to the Mona Lisa.

Crowley lifted the picture down from the wall, revealing a safe. It was not a wall safe; it had been bought from a company that specialized in servicing the nuclear industry.

He unlocked it, revealing an inner door with a dial tumble lock. He spun the dial (4‑0‑0‑4 was the code, easy to remember, the year he had slithered onto this stupid, marvelous planet, back when it was gleaming and new).

Inside the safe were a thermos flask, two heavy PVC gloves, of the kind that covered one's entire arms, and some tongs.

Crowley paused. He eyed the flask nervously.

(There was a crash from downstairs. That had been the front door . . .)

He pulled on the gloves and gingerly took the flask, and the tongs, and the bucket‑and, as an afterthought, he grabbed the plant mister from beside a luxuriant rubber plant‑and headed for his office, walking like a man carrying a thermos flask full of something that might cause, if he dropped it or even thought about dropping it, the sort of explosion that impels graybeards to make statements like "And where this crater is now, once stood the City of Wah‑Shing‑Ton," in SF B‑movies.

He reached his office, nudged open the door with his shoulder. Then he bent his legs, and slowly put things down on the floor. Bucket . . . tongs . . . plant mister . . . and finally, deliberately, the flask.

A bead of sweat began to form on Crowley's forehead, and trickled down into one eye. He flicked it away.

Then, with care and deliberation, he used the tongs to unscrew the top of the flask . . . carefully . . . carefully . . . that was it . . .

(A pounding on the stairs below him, and a muffled scream. That would have been the little old lady on the floor below.)

He could not afford to rush.

He gripped the flask with the tongs, and taking care not to spill the tiniest drop, he poured the contents into the plastic bucket. One false move was all it would take.

There.

Then he opened the office door about six inches, and placed the bucket on top.

He used the tongs to replace the top of the flask, then (‑a crash from his outer hallway‑) pulled off the PVC gloves, picked up the plant mister, and settled himself behind his desk.

"Crawlee . . .?" called a guttural voice. Hastur.

"He's through there," hissed another voice. "I can feel the slimy little creep." Ligur.

Hastur and Ligur.

Now, as Crowley would be the first to protest, most demons weren't deep downevil. In the great cosmic game they felt they occupied the same position as tax inspectors‑doing an unpopular job, maybe, but essential to the overall operation of the whole thing. If it came to that, some angels weren't paragons of virtue; Crowley had met one or two who, when it came to righteously smiting the ungodly, smote a good deal harder than was strictly necessary. On the whole, everyone had a job to do, and just did it.

And on the other hand, you got people like Ligur and Hastur, who took such a dark delight in unpleasantness you might even have mistaken them for human.

Crowley leaned back in his executive chair. He forced himself to relax and failed appallingly.

"In here, people," he called.

"We want a word with you," said Ligur (in a tone of voice intended to imply that "word" was synonymous with "horrifically painful eter­nity"), and the squat demon pushed open the office door.

The bucket teetered, then fell neatly on Ligur's head.

Drop a lump of sodium in water. Watch it flame and burn and spin around crazily, flaring and sputtering. This was like that; just nastier.

The demon peeled and flared and flickered. Oily brown smoke oozed from it, and it screamed and it screamed and it screamed. Then it crumpled, folded in on itself, and what was left lay glistening on the burnt and blackened circle of carpet, looking like a handful of mashed slugs.

"Hi," said Crowley to Hastur, who had been walking behind Ligur, and had unfortunately not been so much as splashed.

There are some things that are unthinkable: there are some depths that not even demons would believe other demons would stoop to.

". . . Holy water. You bastard," said Hastur. "You complete bas­tard.He hadn't never done nothing to you."

"Yet," corrected Crowley, who felt a little more comfortable, now the odds were closer to even. Closer, but not yet even, not by a long shot. Hastur was a Duke of Hell. Crowley wasn't even a local counsellor.

"Your fate will be whispered by mothers in dark places to frighten their young," said Hastur, and then felt that the language of Hell wasn't up to the job. "You're going to get taken to the bloody cleaners,pal," he added.

Crowley raised the green plastic plant mister, and sloshed it around threateningly. "Go away," he said. He heard the phone downstairs ring­ing. Four times, and then the ansaphone caught it. He wondered vaguely who it was.

"You don't frighten me," said Hastur. He watched a drip of water leak from the nozzle and slide slowly down the side of the plastic con­tainer, toward Crowley's hand.

"Do you know what this is?" asked Crowley. "This is a Sainsbury's plant mister, cheapest and most efficient plant mister in the world. It can squirt a fine spray of water into the air. Do I need to tell you what's in it? It can turn you into that," he pointed to the mess on the carpet. "Now, go away."

Then the drip on the side of the plant mister reached Crowley's curled fingers, and stopped. "You're bluffing," said Hastur.

"Maybe I am," said Crowley, in a tone of voice which he hoped made it quite clear that bluffing was the last thing on his mind. "And maybe I'm not. Do you feel lucky?"

Hastur gestured, and the plastic bulb dissolved like rice paper, spill­ing water all over Crowley's desk, and all over Crowley's suit.

"Yes," said Hastur. And then he smiled. His teeth were too sharp, and his tongue flickered between them. "Do you?"

Crowley said nothing. Plan A had worked. Plan B had failed. Ev­erything depended on Plan C, and there was one drawback to this: he had only ever planned as far as B.

"So," hissed Hastur, "time to go, Crowley."

"I think there's something you ought to know," said Crowley, stall­ing for time.

"And that is?" smiled Hastur.

Then the phone on Crowley's desk rang.

He picked it up, and warned Hastur, "Don't move. There's some­thing very important you should know, and I really mean it. Hallo?

"Ngh," said Crowley. Then he said, "Nuh. Got an old friend here."

Aziraphale hung up on him. Crowley wondered what he had wanted.

And suddenly Plan C was there, in his head. He didn't replace the handset on the receiver. Instead he said, "Okay, Hastur. You've passed the test. You're ready to start playing with the big boys."

"Have you gone mad?"

"Nope. Don't you understand? This was a test. The Lords of Hell had to know that you were trustworthy before we gave you command of the Legions of the Damned, in the War ahead."

"Crowley, you are lying, or you are insane, or possibly you are both," said Hastur, but his certainty was shaken.

Just for a moment he had entertained the possibility; that was where Crowley had got him. It wasjust possible that Hell was testing him. That Crowley was more than he seemed. Hastur was paranoid, which was simply a sensible and well‑adjusted reaction to living in Hell, where they really were all out to get you.

Crowley began to dial a number. "'S'okay, Duke Hastur. I wouldn't expect you to believe it from me, " he admitted. "But why don't we talk to the Dark Council‑I am sure that they can convince you."

The number he had dialed clicked and started to ring.

"So long, sucker," he said.

And vanished.

In a tiny fraction of a second, Hastur was gone as well.

– – -

Over the years a huge number of theological man‑hours have been spent debating the famous question:

How Many Angels Can Dance on the Head of a Pin?

In order to arrive at an answer, the following facts must be taken into consideration:

Firstly, angels simply don't dance. It's one of the distinguishing characteristics that marks an angel. They may listen appreciatively to the Music of the Spheres, but they don't feel the urge to get down and boogie to it. So, none.

At least, nearly none. Aziraphale had learned to gavotte in a dis­creet gentlemen's club in Portland Place, in the late 1880s, and while he had initially taken to it like a duck to merchant banking, after a while he had become quite good at it, and was quite put out when, some decades later, the gavotte went out of style for good.

So providing the dance was a gavotte, and providing that he had a suitable partner (also able, for the sake of argument, both to gavotte, and to dance it on the head of a pin), the answer is a straightforward one.

Then again, you might just as well ask how many demons can dance on the head of a pin. They're of the same original stock, after all. And at least they dance. ^[35]

And if you put it that way, the answer is, quite a lot actually, providing they abandon their physical bodies, which is a picnic for a de­mon. Demons aren't bound by physics. If you take the long view, the universe is just something small and round, like those water‑filled balls which produce a miniature snowstorm when you shake them. ^[36]But if you look from really close up, the only problem about dancing on the head of a pin is all those big gaps between electrons.

For those of angel stock or demon breed, size, and shape, and composition, are simply options.

Crowley is currently traveling incredibly fast down a telephone

RING.

Crowley went through two telephone exchanges at a very respect­able fraction of light‑speed. Hastur was a little way behind him: four or five inches, but at that size it gave Crowley a very comfortable lead. One that would vanish, of course, when he came out the other end.

They were too small for sound, but demons don't necessarily need sound to communicate. He could hear Hastur screaming behind him, "You bastard! I'll get you. You can't escape me!"

RING.

"Wherever you come out, I'll come out too! You won't get away!"

Crowley had traveled through over twenty miles of cable in less than a second.

Hastur was close behind him. Crowley was going to have to time this whole thing very, very carefully.

RING.

That was the third ring. Well, thought Crowley, here goes nothing. He stopped, suddenly, and watched Hastur shoot past him. Hastur turned and‑

RING.

Crowley shot out through the phone line, zapped through the plastic sheathing, and materialized, full‑size and out of breath, in his lounge.

click

The outgoing message tape began to turn on his ansaphone. Then there was a beep, and, as the incoming message tape turned, a voice from the speaker screamed, after the beep, "Right! What? . . . You bloody snake!"

The little red message light began to flash.

On and off and on and off, like a tiny, red, angry eye.

Crowley really wished he had some more holy water and the time to hold the cassette in it until it dissolved. But getting hold of Ligur's terminal bath had been dangerous enough, he'd had it for years just in case, and even its presence in the room made him uneasy. Or . . . or maybe . . . yes, what would happen if he put the cassette in the car? He could play Hastur over and over again, until he turned into Freddie Mer­cury. No. He might be a bastard, but you could only go so far.

There was a rumble of distant thunder.

He had no time to spare.

He had nowhere to go.

He went anyway. He ran down to his Bentley and drove toward the West End as if all the demons of hell were after him. Which was more or less the case.

* * * * *

M adame Tracy heard Mr. Shadwell's slow tread come up the stairs. It was slower than usual, and paused every few steps. Normally he came up the stairs as if he hated every one of them.

She opened her door. He was leaning against the landing wall.

"Why, Mr. Shadwell," she said, "whatever have you done to your hand?"

"Get away frae me, wumman," Shadwell groaned. "I dinna know my ane powers!"

"Why are you holding it out like that?"

Shadwell tried to back into the wall.

"Stand back, I tell ye! I canna be responsible!"

"What on earth has happened to you, Mr. Shadwell?" said Ma­dame Tracy, trying to take his hand.

"Nothing on earth! Nothing on earth!"

She managed to grab his arm. He, Shadwell, scourge of evil, was powerless to resist being drawn into her flat.

He'd never been in it before, at least in his waking moments. His dreams had furnished it in silks, rich hangings, and what he thought of as scented ungulants. Admittedly, it did have a bead curtain in the entrance to the kitchenette and a lamp made rather inexpertly from a Chianti bottle, because Madame Tracy's apprehension of what was chic, like Aziraphale's, had grounded around 1953. And there was a table in the middle of the room with a velvet cloth on it and, on the cloth, the crystal ball which increasingly was Madame Tracy's means of earning a living.

"I think you could do with a good lie‑down, Mr. Shadwell," she said, in a voice that brooked no argument, and led him on into the bed­room. He was too bewildered to protest.

"But young Newt is out there," Shadwell muttered, "in thrall to heathen passions and occult wiles."

"Then I'm sure he'll know what to do about them," said Madame Tracy briskly, whose mental picture of what Newt was going through was probably much closer to reality than was Shadwell's. "And I'm sure he wouldn't like to think of you getting yourself worked up into a state here. Just you lie down, and I'll make us both a nice cup of tea."

She disappeared in a clacking of bead curtains.

Suddenly Shadwell was alone on what he was just capable of recall­ing, through the wreckage of his shattered nerves, was a bed of sin, and right at this moment was incapable of deciding whether that was in fact better or worse than notbeing alone on a bed of sin. He turned his head to take in his surroundings.

Madame Tracy's concepts of what was erotic stemmed from the days when young men grew up thinking that women had beach balls affixed firmly in front of their anatomy, Brigitte Bardot could be called a sex kitten without anyone bursting out laughing, and there really were magazines with names like Girls, Giggles and Garters.Somewhere in this cauldron of permissiveness she had picked up the idea that soft toys in the bedroom created an intimate, coquettish air.

Shadwell stared for some time at a large, threadbare teddy bear, which had one eye missing and a torn ear. It probably had a name like Mr. Buggins.

He turned his head the other way. His gaze was blocked by a pajama case shaped like an animal that may have been a dog but, there again, might have been a skunk. It had a cheery grin.

"Urg," he said.

But recollection kept storming back. He really had done it. No one else in the Army had ever exorcised a demon, as far as he knew. Not Hopkins, not Siftings, not Diceman. Probably not even Witchfinder Com­pany Sergeant Major Narker,* who held the all‑time record for most witches found. ^[37]Sooner or later every Army runs across its ultimate weapon and now it existed, Shadwell reflected, on the end of his arm.

Well, screw No First Use. He'd have a bit of a rest, seeing as he was here, and then the Powers of Darkness had met their match at last . . .

When Madame Tracy brought the tea in he was snoring. She tact­fully closed the door, and rather thankfully as well, because she had a seance due in twenty minutes and it was no good turning down money these days.

Although Madame Tracy was by many yardsticks quite stupid, she had an instinct in certain matters, and when it came to dabbling in the occult her reasoning was faultless. Dabbling, she'd realized, was exactly what her customers wanted. They didn't want to be shoved in it up to their necks. They didn't want the multi‑planular mysteries of Time and Space, they just wanted to be reassured that Mother was getting along fine now she was dead. They wanted just enough Occult to season the simple fare of their lives, and preferably in portions no longer than forty‑five minutes, followed by tea and biscuits.

They certainly didn't want odd candles, scents, chants, or mystic runes. Madame Tracy had even removed most of the Major Arcana from her Tarot card pack, because their appearance tended to upset people.

And she made sure that she had always put sprouts on to boil just before a seance. Nothing is more reassuring, nothing is more true to the comfortable spirit of English occultism, than the smell of Brussels sprouts cooking in the next room.

– – -

It was early afternoon, and the heavy storm clouds had turned the sky the color of old lead. It would rain soon, heavily, blindingly. The firemen hoped the rain would come soon. The sooner the better.

They had arrived fairly promptly, and the younger firemen were dashing around excitedly, unrolling their hosepipe and flexing their axes; the older firemen knew at a glance that the building was a dead loss, and weren't even sure that the rain would stop it spreading to neighboring buildings, when a black Bentley skidded around the corner and drove up onto the pavement at a speed somewhere in excess of sixty miles per hour, and stopped with a screech of brakes half an inch away from the wall of the bookshop. An extremely agitated young man in dark glasses got out and ran toward the door of the blazing bookshop.

He was intercepted by a fireman.

"Are you the owner of this establishment?" asked the fireman.

"Don't be stupid! Do I look like I run a bookshop?"

"I really wouldn't know about that, sir. Appearances can be very deceptive. For example, I am a fireman. However, upon meeting me so­cially, people unaware of my occupation often suppose that I am, in fact, a chartered accountant or company director. Imagine me out of uniform, sir, and what kind of man would you see before you? Honestly?"

"A prat," said Crowley, and he ran into the bookshop.

This sounds easier than it actually was, since in order to manage it Crowley needed to avoid half a dozen firemen, two policemen, and a num­ber of interesting Soho night people, ^[38]out early, and arguing heatedly amongst themselves about which particular section of society had bright­ened up the afternoon, and why.

Crowley pushed straight through them. They scarcely spared him a glance.

Then he pushed open the door, and stepped into an inferno.

The whole bookshop was ablaze. "Aziraphale!" he called.

"Aziraphale, you‑you stupid Aziraphale?Are you here?"

No answer. Just the crackle of burning paper, the splintering of glass as the fire reached the upstairs rooms, the crash of collapsing timbers.

He scanned the shop urgently, desperately, looking for the angel, looking for help.

In the far corner a bookshelf toppled over, cascading flaming books across the floor. The fire was all around him, and Crowley ignored it. His left trouser leg began to smolder; he stopped it with a glance.

"Hello? Aziraphale! For Go‑, for Sa‑, for somebody'ssake! Aziraphale!"

The shop window was smashed from outside. Crowley turned, star­tled, and an unexpected jet of water struck him full in the chest, knocking him to the ground.

His shades flew to a far corner of the room, and became a puddle of burning plastic. Yellow eyes with slitted vertical pupils were revealed. Wet and steaming, face ash‑blackened, as far from cool as it was possible for him to be, on all fours in the blazing bookshop, Crowley cursed Aziraphale, and the ineffable plan, and Above, and Below.

Then he looked down, and saw it. The book. The book that the girl had left in the car in Tadfield, on Wednesday night. It was slightly scorched around the cover, but miraculously unharmed. He picked it up, stuffed it into his jacket pocket, stood up, unsteadily, and brushed himself off.

The floor above him collapsed. With a roar and gargantuan shrug the building fell in on itself, in a rain of brick and timber and flaming debris.

Outside, the passersby were being herded back by the police, and a fireman was explaining to anyone who would listen, "I couldn't stop him. He must have been mad. Or drunk. Just ran in. I couldn't stop him. Mad. Ran straight in. Horrible way to die. Horrible, horrible. Just ran straight in . . .

Then Crowley came out of the flames.

The police and the firemen looked at him, saw the expression on his face, and stayed exactly where they were.

He climbed into the Bentley and reversed back into the road, swung around a fire truck, into Wardour Street, and into the darkened afternoon.

They stared at the car as it sped away. Finally one policeman spoke. "Weather like this, he ought to of put his lights on," he said, numbly.

"Especially driving like that. Could be dangerous," agreed another, in flat, dead tones, and they all stood there in the light and the heat of the burning bookshop, wondering what was happening to a world they had thought they understood.

There was a flash of lightning, blue‑white, strobing across the cloud‑black sky, a crack of thunder so loud it hurt, and a hard rain began to fall.

* * * * *

S he rode a red motorbike. Not a friendly Honda red; a deep, bloody red, rich and dark and hateful. The bike was apparently, in every other respect, ordinary except for the sword, resting in its scabbard, set onto the side of the bike.

Her helmet was crimson, and her leather jacket was the color of old wine. In ruby studs on the back were picked out the words HELL'S AN­GELS.

It was ten past one in the afternoon and it was dark and humid and wet. The motorway was almost deserted, and the woman in red roared down the road on her red motorbike, smiling lazily.

It had been a good day so far. There was something about the sight of a beautiful woman on a powerful motorbike with a sword stuck on the back that had a powerful effect on a certain type of man. So far four traveling salesmen had tried to race her, and bits of Ford Sierra now decorated the crash barriers and bridge supports along forty miles of mo­torway.

She pulled up at a service area, and went into the Happy Porker Cafe. It was almost empty. A bored waitress was darning a sock behind the counter, and a knot of black‑leathered bikers, hard, hairy, filthy, and huge, were clustered around an even taller individual in a black coat. He was resolutely playing something that in bygone years would have been a fruit machine, but now had a video screen, and advertised itself as TRIVIA SCRABBLE.

The audience were saying things like:

"It's 'D'! Press 'D'‑The Godfather must'vegot more Oscars than Gone With the Wind!"

"Puppet on a String! Sandie Shaw! Honest. I'm bleeding positive!"

"1666!"

"No, you great pillock! That was the fire! The Plague was 1665!"

"It's 'B'‑the Great Wall of China wasn'tone of the Seven Wonders of the world!"

There were four options: Pop Music, Sport, Current Events, and General Knowledge. The tall biker, who had kept his helmet on, was pressing the buttons, to all intents and purposes oblivious of his support­ers. At any rate, he was consistently winning.

The red rider went over to the counter.

"A cup of tea, please. And a cheese sandwich," she said.

"You on your own, then, dear?" asked the waitress, passing the tea, and something white and dry and hard, across the counter.

"Waiting for friends."

"Ah," she said, biting through some wool. "Well, you're better off waiting in here. It's hell out there."

"No," she told her. "Not yet."

She picked a window table, with a good view of the parking lot, and she waited.

She could hear the Trivia Scrabblers in the background.

"Thass a new one, 'How many times has England been officially at war with France since 1066?"'

"Twenty? Nah, s'never twenty . . . Oh. It was. Well, I never."

"American war with Mexico? I know that. It's June 1845. 'D'‑see! I tol' you!"

The second‑shortest biker, Pigbog (6' 3"), whispered to the short­est, Greaser (6' 2"):

"What happened to 'Sport', then?" He had LOVE tattooed on one set of knuckles, HATE on the other.

"It's random wossit, selection, innit. I mean they do it with micro­chips. It's probably got, like, millions of different subjects in there, in its RAM." He had FISH across his right‑hand knuckle, and CHIP on the left.

"Pop Music, Current Events, General Knowledge, and War. It's just I've never seen 'War' before. That's why I mentioned it." Pigbog cracked his knuckles, loudly, and pulled the ring tab on a can of beer. He swigged back half a can, belched carelessly, then sighed. "I just wish they'd do more bleeding Bible questions."

"Why?" Greaser had never thought of Pigbog as being a Bible trivia freak.

"'Cos, well, you remember that bit of bother in Brighton?"

"Oh, yeah. You was on Crimewatch," said Greaser, with a trace of envy.

"Well, I had to hang out in that hotel where me mam worked, dinni? Free months. And nothin' to read, only this bugger Gideon had left his Bible behind. It kind of sticks in your mind."

Another motorbike, jet black and gleaming, drew up in the car­park outside.

The door to the cafe opened. A blast of cold wind blew through the room; a man dressed all in black leather, with a short black beard, walked over to the table, sat next to the woman in red, and the bikers around the video scrabble machine suddenly noticed how hungry they all were, and deputed Skuzz to go and get them something to eat. All of them except the player, who said nothing, just pressed the buttons for the right answers and let his winnings accumulate in the tray at the bottom of the machine.

"I haven't seen you since Mafeking," said Red. "How's it been going?"

"I've been keeping pretty busy," said Black. "Spent a lot of time in America. Brief world tours. Just killing time, really."

("What do you mean, you've got no steak and kidney pies?" asked Skuzz, affronted.

"I thought we had some, but we don't," said the woman.)

"Feels funny, all of us finally getting together like this," said Red.

"Funny?"

"Well, you know. When you've spent all these thousands of years waiting for the big day, and it finally comes. Like waiting for Christmas. Or birthdays."

"We don't have birthdays."

"I didn't say we do. I just said that was what it was like."

("Actually," admitted the woman, "it doesn't look like we've got anything left at all. Except that slice of pizza."

"Has it got anchovies on it?" asked Skuzz gloomily. None of the chapter liked anchovies. Or olives.

"Yes, dear. It's anchovy and olives. Would you like it?"

Skuzz shook his head sadly. Stomach rumbling, he made his way back to the game. Big Ted got irritable when he got hungry, and when Big Ted got irritable everyone got a slice.)

A new category had come up on the video screen. You could now answer questions about Pop Music, Current Events, Famine, or War. The bikers seemed marginally less informed about the Irish Potato Famine of 1846, the English everything famine of 1315, and the 1969 dope famine in San Francisco than they had been about War, but the player was still racking up a perfect score, punctuated occasionally by a whir, ratchet, and chink as the machine disgorged pound coins into its tray.

"Weather looks a bit tricky down south," said Red.

Black squinted at the darkening clouds. "No. Looks fine to me. We'll have a thunderstorm along any minute."

Red looked at her nails. "That's good. It wouldn't be the same if we didn't have a good thunderstorm. Any idea how far we've got to ride?"

Black shrugged. "A few hundred miles."

"I thought it'd be longer, somehow. All that waiting, just for a few hundred miles."

"It's not the traveling," said Black. "It's the arriving that matters."

There was a roar outside. It was the roar of a motorbike with a defective exhaust, untuned engine, leaky carburetor. You didn't have to see the bike to imagine the clouds of black smoke it traveled in, the oil slicks it left in its wake, the trail of small motorbike parts and fittings that littered the roads behind it.

Black went up to the counter.

"Four teas, please," he said. "One black."

The cafe door opened. A young man in dusty white leathers en­tered, and the wind blew empty crisp packets and newspapers and ice cream wrappers in with him. They danced around his feet like excited children, then fell exhausted to the floor.

"Four of you, are there, dear?" asked the woman. She was trying to find some clean cups and tea spoons‑the entire rack seemed suddenly to have been coated in a light film of motor oil and dried egg.

"There will be," said the man in black, and he took the teas and went back to the table, where his two comrades waited.

"Any sign of him?" said the boy in white.

They shook their heads.

An argument had broken out around the video screen (current categories showing on the screen were War, Famine, Pollution, and Pop Trivia 1962‑1979).

"Elvis Presley? 'Sgotta be 'C'‑it was 1977 he snuffed it, wasn't it?"

"Nah. 'D.' 1976. I'm positive."

"Yeah. Same year as Bing Crosby."

"And Marc Bolan. He was dead good. Press 'D,' then. Go on."

The tall figure made no motion to press any of the buttons.

"Woss the matter with you?" asked Big Ted, irritably. "Go on. Press 'D.' Elvis Presley died in 1976."

I DON'T CARE WHAT IT SAYS, said the tall biker in the hel­met, I NEVER LAID A FINGER ON HIM.

The three people at the table turned as one. Red spoke. "When did you get here?" she asked.

The tall man walked over to the table, leaving the astonished bik­ers, and his winnings, behind him. I NEVER WENT AWAY, he said, and his voice was a dark echo from the night places, a cold slab of sound, gray, and dead. If that voice was a stone it would have had words chiseled on it a long time ago: a name, and two dates.

"Your tea's getting cold, lord," said Famine.

"It's been a long time," said War.

There was a flash of lightning, almost immediately followed by a low rumble of thunder.

"Lovely weather for it," said Pollution.

YES.

The bikers around the game were getting progressively baffled by this exchange. Led by Big Ted, they shambled over to the table and stared at the four strangers.

It did not escape their notice that all four strangers had HELL'S ANGELS on their jackets. And they looked dead dodgy as far as the Angels were concerned: too clean for a start; and none of the four looked like they'd ever broken anyone's arm just because it was Sunday afternoon and there wasn't anything good on the telly. And one was a woman, too, only not ridin' around on the back of someone's bike but actually allowed one of her own, like she had any right to it.

"You're Hell's Angels, then?" asked Big Ted, sarcastically. If there's one thing real Hell's Angels can't abide, it's weekend bikers. ^[39]

The four strangers nodded.

"What chapter are you from, then?"

The Tall Stranger looked at Big Ted. Then he stood up. It was a complicated motion; if the shores of the seas of night had deckchairs, they'd open up something like that.

He seemed to be unfolding himself forever.

He wore a dark helmet, completely hiding his features. And it was made of that weird plastic, Big Ted noted. Like, you looked in it, and all you could see was your own face.

REVELATIONS, he said. CHAPTER SIX.

"Verses two to eight," added the boy in white, helpfully.

Big Ted glared at the four of them. His lower jaw began to pro­trude, and a little blue vein in his temple started to throb. "Wossat mean then?" he demanded.

There was a tug at his sleeve. It was Pigbog. He had gone a peculiar shade of gray, under the dirt.

"It means we're in trouble," said Pigbog.

And then the tall stranger reached up a pale motorbike gauntlet, and raised the visor of his helmet, and Big Ted found himself wishing, for the first time in his existence, that he'd lived a better life.

"Jesus Christ!" he moaned.

"I think He may be along in a minute," said Pigbog urgently. "He's probably looking for somewhere to park his bike. Let's go and, and join a youf club or somethin' . . ."

But Big Ted's invincible ignorance was his shield and armor. He didn't move.

"Cor," he said. "Hell's Angels."

War flipped him a lazy salute.

"That's us, Big Ted," she said. "The real McCoy."

Famine nodded. "The Old Firm," he said.

Pollution removed his helmet and shook out his long white hair. He had taken over when Pestilence, muttering about penicillin, had retired in 1936. If only the old boy had known what opportunities the future had held . . .

"Others promise," he said, "we deliver."

Big Ted looked at the fourth Horseman. " 'Ere, I seen you before," he said. "You was on the cover of that Blue Oyster Cult album. An' I got a ring wif your . . . your . . . your head on it."

I GET EVERYWHERE.

"Cor." Big Ted's big face screwed up with the effort of thought.

"Wot kind of bike you ridin'?" he said.

– – -

The storm raged around the quarry. The rope with the old car tire on it danced in the gale. Sometimes a sheet of iron, relic of an attempt at a tree house, would shake loose from its insubstantial moorings and sail away.

The Them huddled together, staring at Adam. He seemed bigger, somehow. Dog sat and growled. He was thinking of all the smells he would lose. There were no smells in Hell, apart from the sulphur. While some of them here, were, were . . . well, the fact was, there were no bitches in hell either.

Adam was marching about excitedly, waving his hands in the air. "There'll be no end to the fun we can have," he said. "There'll be exploring and everything. I 'spect I can soon get the ole jungles to grow again."

"But‑but who‑who'll do the, you know, all the cooking and washing and suchlike?" quavered Brian.

"No one'll have to do any of that stuff," said Adam. "You can have all the food you like, loads of chips, fried onion rings, anything you like. An' never have to wear any new clothes or have a bath if you don't want to or anything. Or go to school or anything. Or do anything you don't want to do, ever again. It'll be wicked!"

– – -

The moon came up over the Kookamundi Hills. It was very bright tonight.

Johnny Two Bones sat in the red basin of the desert. It was a sacred place, where two ancestral rocks, formed in the Dream‑time, lay as they had since the beginning. Johnny Two Bones' walkabout was coming to an end. His cheeks and chest were smeared with red ochre, and he was sing­ing an old song, a sort of singing map of the hills, and he was drawing patterns in the dust with his spear.

He had not eaten for two days; he had not slept. He was approach­ing a trance state, making him one with the Bush, putting him into com­munion with his ancestors.

He was nearly there.

Nearly . . .

He blinked. Looked around wonderingly.

"Excuse me, dear boy, " he said to himself, out loud, in precise, enunciated tones. "But have you any idea where I am?"

"Who said that?" said Johnny Two Bones.

His mouth opened. "1 did."

Johnny scratched, thoughtfully. "I take it you're one of me ances­tors, then, mate?"

"Oh. Indubitably, dear boy. Quite indubitably. In a manner of speaking. Now, to get back to my original question. Where am I?"

"Only if you're one of my ancestors," continued Johnny Two Bones, "why are you talking like a poofter?"

"Ah. Australia, " said Johnny Two Bones' mouth, pronouncing the word as though it would have to be properly disinfected before he said it again. "Oh dear. Well, thank you anyway."

"Hello? Hello?" said Johnny Two Bones.

He sat in the sand, and he waited, and he waited, but he didn't reply.

Aziraphale had moved on.

– – -

Citron Deux‑Chevaux was tonton macoute,a travelling houngan: ^[40]he had a satchel over his shoulder, containing magical plants, medicinal plants, bits of wild cat, black candles, a powder derived chiefly from the skin of a certain dried fish, a dead centipede, a half‑bottle of Chivas Regal, ten Rothmans, and a copy of What's On In Haiti.

He hefted the knife, and, with an experienced slicing motion, cut the head from a black cockerel. Blood washed over his right hand.

"Loa ride me," he intoned. "Gros Bon Angecome to me."

"Where am I?" he said.

"Is that my Gros Bon Ange?"he asked himself.

"I think that's a rather personal question, " he replied. " I mean, as these things go. But one tries as it were. One does one's best."

Citron found one of his hands reaching for the cockerel. "Rather unsanitary place to do your cooking, don't you think? Out here in the jungle. Having a barbecue, are we? What kind of place is this?"

"Haitian," he answered.

"Damn! Nowhere near. Still, could be worse. Ah, I must be on my way. Be good. "

And Citron Deux‑Chevaux was alone in his head.

"Loas be buggered," he muttered to himself He stared into nothing for a while, and then reached for the satchel and its bottle of Chivas Regal. There are at least two ways to turn someone into a zombie. He was going to take the easiest.

The surf was loud on the beaches. The palms shook.

A storm was coming.

– – -

The lights went up. The Power Cable (Nebraska) Evangelical Choir launched into "Jesus is the Telephone Repairman on the Switchboard of My Life," and almost drowned out the sound of the rising wind.

Marvin O. Bagman adjusted his tie, checked his grin in the mirror, patted the bottom of his personal assistant (Miss Cindi Kellerhals, Pent­housePet of the Month three years ago last July; but she had put that all behind her when she got Career), and he walked out onto the studio floor.

Jesus won't cut you off before you're through

With him you won't never get a crossed line,

And when your bill comes it'll all be properly itemized

He's the telephone repairman on the switchboard of my life,

the choir sang. Marvin was fond of that song. He had written it himself. Other songs he had written included: "Happy Mister Jesus," "Jesus, Can I Come and Stay at Your Place?" "That OI' Fiery Cross," "Jesus Is the Sticker on the Bumper of My Soul," and "When I'm Swept Up by the Rapture Grab the Wheel of My Pick‑Up." They were available on Jesus Is My Buddy(LP, cassette, and CD), and were advertised every four minutes on Bagman's evangelical network. ^[41]

Despite the fact that the lyrics didn't rhyme, or, as a rule, make any sense, and that Marvin, who was not particularly musical, had stolen all the tunes from old country songs, Jesus Is My Buddyhad sold over four million copies.

Marvin had started off as a country singer, singing old Conway Twitty and Johnny Cash songs.

He had done regular live concerts from San Quentin jail until the civil rights people got him under the Cruel and Unusual Punishment clause.

It was then that Marvin got religion. Not the quiet, personal kind, that involves doing good deeds and living a better life; not even the kind that involves putting on a suit and ringing people's doorbells; but the kind that involves having your own TV network and getting people to send you money.

He had found the perfect TV mix, on Marvin's Hour of Power("The show that put the FUN back into Fundamentalist!"). Four three­-minute songs from the LP, twenty minutes of Hellfire, and five minutes of healing people. (The remaining twenty‑three minutes were spent alter­nately cajoling, pleading, threatening, begging, and occasionally simply asking for money.) In the early days he had actually brought people into the studio to heal, but had found that too complicated, so these days he simply proclaimed visions vouchsafed to him of viewers all across America getting magically cured as they watched. This was much simpler‑he no longer needed to hire actors, and there was no way anyone could check on his success rate. ^[42]

The world is a lot more complicated than most people believe. Many people believed, for example, that Marvin was not a true Believer because he made so much money out of it. They were wrong. He believed with all his heart. He believed utterly, and spent a lot of the money that flooded in on what he really thought was the Lord's work.

The phone line to the saviour's always free of interference

He's in at any hour, day or night

And when you call J‑E‑S‑U‑S you always call toll free

He's the telephone repairman on the switchboard of my life.

The first song concluded, and Marvin walked in front of the cam­eras and raised his arms modestly for silence. In the control booth, the engineer turned down the Applause track.

"Brothers and sisters, thank you, thank you, wasn't that beautiful? And remember, you can hear that song and others just as edifyin' on Jesus Is My Buddy,just phone 1‑800‑CASH and pledge your donation now."

He became more serious.

"Brothers and sisters, I've got a message for you all, an urgent message from our Lord, for you all, man and woman and little babes, friends, let me tell you about the Apocalypse. It's all there in your bible, in the Revelation our Lord gave Saint John on Patmos, and in the Book of Daniel. The Lord always gives it to you straight, friends‑your future. So what's goin' to happen?

"War. Plague. Famine. Death. Rivers urv blurd. Great earthquakes. Nukyeler missiles. Horrible times are cumin', brothers and sisters. And there's only one way to avoid 'em.

"Before the Destruction comes‑before the four horsemen of the apocalypse ride out‑before the nukerler missiles rain down on the unbe­lievers‑there will come The Rapture.

"What's the Rapture? I hear you cry.

"When the Rapture comes, brothers and sisters, all the True Believ­ers will be swept up in the air‑it don't mind what you're doin', you could be in the bath, you could be at work, you could be drivin' your car, or just sittin' at home readin' your Bible. Suddenly you'll be up there in the air, in perfect and incorruptible bodies. And you'll be up in the air, lookin' down at the world as the years of destruction arrive. Only the faithful will be saved, only those of you who have been born again will avoid the pain and the death and the horror and the burnin'. Then will come the great war between Heaven and Hell, and Heaven will destroy the forces of Hell, and God shall wipe away the tears of the sufferin', and there shall be no more death, or sorrow, or cryin', or pain, and he shall rayon in glory for ever and ever‑"

He stopped, suddenly.

"Well, nice try," he said, in a completely different voice, "only it won't be like that at all. Not really.

"I mean, you're right about the fire and war, all that. But that Rapture stuff well, if you could see them all in Heaven‑serried ranks of them as far as the mind can follow and beyond, league after league of us, flaming swords, all that, well, what I'm trying to say is who has time to go round picking people out and popping them up in the air to sneer at the people dying of radiation sickness on the parched and burning earth below them? If that's your idea of a morally acceptable time, I might add.

"And as for that stuff about Heaven inevitably winning . . . Well, to be honest, if it were that cut and dried, there wouldn't be a Celestial War in the first place, would there? It's propaganda. Pure and simple. We've got no more than a fifty percent chance of coming out on top. You might just as well send money to a Satanist hotline to cover your bets, although to be frank when the fire falls and the seas of blood rise you lot are all going to be civilian casualties either way. Between our war and your war, they're going to kill everyone and let God sort it out‑right?

"Anyway, sorry to stand here wittering, I've just a quick question­where am I?"

Marvin O. Bagman was gradually going purple.

"It's the devil! Lord protect me! The devil is speakin' through me!" he erupted, and interrupted himself, "Oh no, quite the opposite in fact. I'm an angel. Ah. This has to be America, doesn't it? So sorry, can't stay . . . "

There was a pause. Marvin tried to open his mouth, but nothing happened. Whatever was in his head looked around. He looked at the studio crew, those who weren't phoning the police, or sobbing in corners. He looked at the gray‑faced cameramen.

"Gosh, " he said, "am I on television?"

– – -

Crowley was doing a hundred and twenty miles an hour down Oxford Street.

He reached into the glove compartment for his spare pair of sunglasses, and found only cassettes. Irritably he grabbed one at random and pushed it into the slot.

He wanted Bach, but he would settle for The Travelling Wilburys.

All we need is, Radio Gaga, sang Freddie Mercury.

All I need is out, thought Crowley.

He swung around the Marble Arch Roundabout the wrong way, doing ninety. Lightning made the London skies flicker like a malfunction­ing fluorescent tube.

A livid sky on London, Crowley thought, And I knew the end was near.Who had written that? Chesterton, wasn't it? The only poet in the twentieth century to even come close to the Truth.

The Bentley headed out of London while Crowley sat back in the driver's seat and thumbed through the singed copy of The Nice and Accu­rate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter.

Near the end of the book he found a folded sheet of paper covered in Aziraphale's neat copperplate handwriting. He unfolded it (while the Bentley's gearstick shifted itself down to third and the car accelerated around a fruit lorry, which had unexpectedly backed out of aside street), and then he read it again.

Then he read it one more time, with a slow sinking feeling at the base of his stomach.

The car changed direction suddenly. It was now heading for the village of Tadfield, in Oxfordshire. He could be there in an hour if he hurried.

Anyway, there wasn't really anywhere else to go.

The cassette finished, activating the car radio.

". . . Gardeners' Question Time coming to you from Tadfield Gar­dening Club. We were last here in 1953, a very nice summer, and as the team will remember it's a rich Oxfordshire loam in the East of the parish, rising to chalk in the West; the kind of place of say, don't matter what you plant here, it'll come up beautiful Isn't that right, Fred?"

"Yep, " said Professor Fred Windbright, Royal Botanical Gardens, "Couldn't of put it better meself "

"Right‑First question for the team, and this comes from Mr. R. P. Tyler, chairman of the local Residents Association, I do believe."

"Ahem. That's right. Well, I'm a keen rose grower, but my prize­winning Molly McGuire lost a couple of blossoms yesterday in a rain of what were apparently fish. What does the team recommend for this other than place netting over the garden? 1 mean, I've written to the council . . ."

"Not a common problem, I'd say. Harry?"

"Mr. Tyler, let me ask you a question‑were these fresh fish, or preserved?"

"Fresh, 1 believe."

"Well, you've got no problems, my friend. 1 hear you've also been having rains of blood in these parts‑and 1 wish we had these up in the Dales, where my garden is. Save me a fortune in fertilizers. Now, what you do is, you dig them in to your . . ." CROWLEY?

Crowley said nothing.

CROWLEY THE WAR HAS BEGUN, CROWLEY WE NOTE WITH INTEREST THAT YOU AVOIDED THE FORCES WE EMPOW­ERED TO COLLECT YOU.

"Mm," Crowley agreed.

CROWLEY . . . WE WILL WIN THIS WAR. BUT EVEN IF WE LOSE, AT LEAST AS FAR AS YOU ARE CONCERNED, IT WILL MAKE NO DIFFERENCE AT ALL. FOR AS LONG AS THERE IS ONE DEMON LEFT IN HELL, CROWLEY, YOU WILL WISH YOU HAD BEEN CREATED MORTAL.

Crowley was silent.

MORTALS CAN HOPE FOR DEATH, OR FOR REDEMPTION. YOU CAN HOPE FOR NOTHING.

ALL YOU CAN HOPE FOR IS THE MERCY OF HELL.

"Yeah?"

JUST OUR LITTLE JOKE.

"Ngk," said Crowley.

". . . now as keen gardeners know, it goes without sayin' that he's a cunnin' little devil, your Tibetan. Tunnelin' straight through your begonias like it was nobody's business. A cup of tea'll shift him, with rancid yak butter for preference you should be able to get some at any good Bard . . ."

Wheee. Whizz. Pop. Static drowned out the rest of the program.

Crowley turned off the radio and bit his lower lip. Beneath the ash and soot that flaked his face, he looked very tired, and very pale, and very scared.

And, suddenly, very angry. It was the way they talked to you. As if you were a houseplant who had started shedding leaves on the carpet.

And then he turned a corner, which was meant to take him onto the slip road to the M25, from which he'd swing off onto the M40 up to Oxfordshire.

But something had happened to the M25. Something that hurt your eyes, if you looked directly at it.

From what had been the M25 London Orbital Motorway came a low chanting, a noise formed of many strands: car horns, and engines, and sirens, and the bleep of cellular telephones, and the screaming of small children trapped by back‑seat seat‑belts for ever. "Hail the Great Beast, Devourer of Worlds," came the chanting, over and over again, in the secret tongue of the Black priesthood of ancient Mu.

The dreaded sigil Odegra, thought Crowley, as he swung the car around, heading for the North Circular. I did that‑that's my fault. It could have been just another motorway. A good job, I'll grant you, but was it really worthwhile? It's all out of control. Heaven and Hell aren't running things any more, it's like the whole planet is a Third World country that's finally got the Bomb . . .

Then he began to smile. He snapped his fingers. A pair of dark glasses materialized out of his eyes. The ash vanished from his suit and his skin.

What the hell. If you had to go, why not go with style?

Whistling softly, he drove.

* * * * *

T hey came down the outside lane of the motor­way like destroying angels, which was fair enough.

They weren't going that fast, all things considered. The four of them were holding a steady 105 mph, as if they were confident that the show could not start before they got there. It couldn't. They had all the time in the world, such as it was.

Just behind them came four other riders: Big Ted, Greaser, Pigbog, and Skuzz.

They were elated. They were realHell's Angels now, and they rode the silence.

Around them, they knew, was the roar of the thunderstorm, the thunder of traffic, the whipping of the wind and the rain. But in the wake of the Horsemen there was silence, pure and dead. Almost pure, anyway. Certainly dead.

It was broken by Pigbog, shouting to Big Ted.

"What you going to be, then?" he asked, hoarsely.

"What?"

"I said, what you‑"

"I heard what you said. It's not what you said. Everyone heard what you said. What did you mean,tha's what I wanter know?"

Pigbog wished he'd paid more attention to the Book of Revelation.

If he'd known he was going to be in it, he'd have read it more carefully. "What I mean is, they'rethe Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, right?"

"Bikers," said Greaser.

"Right. Four Bikers of the Apocalypse. War, Famine, Death, and­, and the other one. P'lution."

"Yeah? So?"

"So they said it was all right if we came with them, right?"

"So?"

"So we're the otherFour Horse‑, um, Bikers of the Apocalypse. So which ones arewe?"

There was a pause. The lights of passing cars shot past them in the opposite lane, lightning after‑imaged the clouds, and the silence was close to absolute.

"Can I be War as well?" asked Big Ted.

"Course you can't be War. How can you be War? She'sWar. You've got to be something else."

Big Ted screwed up his face with the effort of thought. "G.B.H.," he said, eventually. "I'm Grievous Bodily Harm. That's me. There. Wott're you going to be?"

"Can I be Rubbish?" asked Skuzz. "Or Embarrassing Personal Problems?"

"Can't be Rubbish," said Grievous Bodily Harm. "He's got that one sewn up, Pollution. You can be the other, though."

They rode on in the silence and the dark, the rear red lights of the Four a few hundred yards in front of them.

Grievous Bodily Harm, Embarrassing Personal Problems, Pigbog and Greaser.

"I wonter be Cruelty to Animals," said Greaser. Pigbog wondered if he was for or against it. Not that it really mattered.

And then it was Pigbog's turn.

"I, uh . . . I think I'll be them answer phones. They're pretty bad," he said.

"You can't be ansaphones. What kind of a Biker of the Repocalypse is ansaphones? That's stupid, that is."

"S'not!" said Pigbog, nettled. "It's like War, and Famine, and that. It's a problem of life, isn't it? Answer phones. I hate bloody answer phones."

"I hate ansaphones, too," said Cruelty to Animals.

"You can shut up," said G.B.H.

"Can I change mine?" asked Embarrassing Personal Problems, who had been thinking intently since he last spoke. "I want to be Things Not Working Properly Even After You've Thumped Them."

"All right, you can change. But you can't be ansaphones, Pigbog. Pick something else."

Pigbog pondered. He wished he'd never broached the subject. It was like the careers interviews he had had as a schoolboy. He deliberated.

"Really cool people," he said at last. "I hate them."

"Really cool people?" said Things Not Working Properly Even Af­ter You've Given Them A Good Thumping.

"Yeah. You know. The kind you see on telly, with stupid haircuts, only on them it dun't look stupid 'cos it's them. They wear baggy suits, an' you're not allowed to say they're a bunch of wankers. I mean, speaking for me, what I always want to do when I see one of them is push their faces very slowly through a barbed‑wire fence. An' what I think is this." He took a deep breath. He was sure this was the longest speech he had ever made in his life. ^[43]"What I think is this.If they get up my nose like that, they pro'lly get up everyone else's."

"Yeah," said Cruelty to Animals. "An' they all wear sunglasses even when they dunt need 'em."

"Eatin' runny cheese, and that stupid bloody No Alcohol Lager," said Things Not Working Properly Even After You've Given Them A Good Thumping. "I hate that stuff. What's the point of drinking the stuff if it dun't leave you puking? Here, I just thought. Can I change again, so I'm No Alcohol Lager?"

"No you bloody can't," said Grievous Bodily Harm. "You've changed once already."

"Anyway," said Pigbog. "That's why I wonter be Really Cool People."

"All right," said his leader.

"Don't see why I can't be No bloody Alcohol Lager if I want."

"Shut your face."

Death and Famine and War and Pollution continued biking toward Tadfield.

And Grievous Bodily Harm, Cruelty to Animals, Things Not Working Properly Even After You've Given Them A Good Thumping But Secretly No Alcohol Lager, and Really Cool People traveled with them.

– – -

It was a wet and blustery Saturday afternoon, and Madame Tracy was feeling very occult.

She had her flowing dress on, and a saucepan full of sprouts on the stove. The room was lit by candlelight, each candle carefully placed in a wax‑encrusted wine bottle at the four corners of her sitting room.

There were three other people at her sitting. Mrs. Ormerod from Belsize Park, in a dark green hat that might have been a flowerpot in a previous life; Mr. Scroggie, thin and pallid, with bulging colorless eyes; and Julia Petley from Hair Today, ^[44]the hairdressers' on the High Street, fresh out of school and convinced that she herself had unplumbed occult depths. In order to enhance the occult aspects of herself, Julia had begun to wear far too much handbeaten silver jewelry and green eyeshadow. She felt she looked haunted and gaunt and romantic, and she would have, if she had lost another thirty pounds. She was convinced that she was an­orexic, because every time she looked in the mirror she did indeed see a fat person.

"Can you link hands?" asked Madame Tracy. "And we must have complete silence. The spirit world is very sensitive to vibration."

"Ask if my Ron is there," said Mrs. Ormerod. She had a jaw like a brick.

"I will, love, but you've got to be quiet while I make contact."

There was silence, broken only by Mr. Scroggie's stomach rum­bling. "Pardon, ladies," he mumbled.

Madame Tracy had found, through years of Drawing Aside the Veil and Exploring the Mysteries, that two minutes was the right length of time to sit in silence, waiting for the Spirit World to make contact. More than that and they got restive, less than that and they felt they weren't getting their money's worth.

She did her shopping list in her head.

Eggs. Lettuce. Ounce of cooking cheese. Four tomatoes. Butter. Roll of toilet paper. Mustn't forget that, we're nearly out. And a really nice piece of liver for Mr. Shadwell, poor old soul, it's a shame . . .

Time.

Madame Tracy threw back her head, let it loll on one shoulder, then slowly lifted it again. Her eyes were almost shut.

"She's going under now, dear," she heard Mrs. Ormerod whisper to Julia Petley. "Nothing to be alarmed about. She's just making herself a Bridge to the Other Side. Her spirit guide will be along soon."

Madame Tracy found herself rather irritated at being upstaged, and she let out a low moan. "Oooooooooh."

Then, in a high‑pitched, quavery voice, "Are you there, my Spirit Guide?"

She waited a little, to build up the suspense. Washing‑up liquid. Two cans of baked beans. Oh, and potatoes.

"How?" she said, in a dark brown voice.

"Is that you, Geronimo?" she asked herself.

"Is um me, how," she replied.

"We have a new member of the circle with us this afternoon," she said.

"How, Miss Petley?" she said, as Geronimo. She had always under­stood that Red Indian spirit guides were an essential prop, and she rather liked the name. She had explained this to Newt. She didn't know anything about Geronimo, he realized, and he didn't have the heart to tell her.

"Oh," squeaked Julia. "Charmed to make your acquaintance."

"Is my Ron there, Geronimo?" asked Mrs. Ormerod.

"How, squaw Beryl," said Madame Tracy. "Oh there are so many um of the poor lost souls um lined up against um door to my teepee. Perhaps your Ron is amongst them. How."

Madame Tracy had learned her lesson years earlier, and now never brought Ron through until near the end. If she didn't, Beryl Ormerod would occupy the rest of the seance telling the late Ron Ormerod every­thing that had happened to her since their last little chat. (". . . now Ron, you remember, our Eric's littlest, Sybilla, well you wouldn't recognize her now, she's taken up macrame, and our Letitia, you know, our Karen's oldest, she's become a lesbian but that's all right these days and is doing a dissertation on the films of Sergio Leone as seen from a feminist perspec­tive, and our Stan, you know, our Sandra's twin, I told you about him last time, well, he won the darts tournament, which is nice because we all thought he was a bit of a mother's boy, while the guttering over the shed's come loose, but I spoke to our Cindi's latest, who's a jobbing builder, and he'll be over to see to it on Sunday, and ohh, that reminds me . . .")

No, Beryl Ormerod could wait. There was a flash of lightning, followed almost immediately by a rumble of distant thunder. Madame Tracy felt rather proud, as if she had done it herself. It was even better than the candles at creating ambulance. Ambulancewas what mediuming was all about.

"Now," said Madame Tracy in her own voice. "Mr. Geronimo would like to know, is there anyone named Mr. Scroggie here?"

Scroggie's watery eyes gleamed. "Erm, actually that's my name," he said, hopefully.

"Right, well there's somebody here for you." Mr. Scroggie had been coming for a month now, and she hadn't been able to think of a message for him. His time had come. "Do you know anyone named, um, John?"

"No," said Mr. Scroggie.

"Well, there's some celestial interference here. The name could be Tom. Or Jim. Or, um, Dave."

"I knew a Dave when I was in Hemel Hempstead," said Mr. Scrog­gie, a trifle doubtfully.

"Yes, he's saying, Hemel Hempstead, that's what he's saying," said Madame Tracy.

"But I ran into him last week, walking his dog, and he looked perfectly healthy," said Mr. Scroggie, slightly puzzled.

"He says not to worry, and he's happier beyond the veil," soldiered on Madame Tracy, who felt it was always better to give her clients good news.

"Tell my Ron I've got to tell him about our Krystal's wedding," said Mrs. Ormerod.

"I will, love. Now, hold on a mo', there's something coming through . . ."

And then something came through. It sat in Madame Tracy's head and peered out.

"Sprechen sie Deutsch?" it said, using Madame Tracy's mouth. "Parlez‑vous Franrais7 Wo bu hui jiang zhongwen?"

"Is that you, Ron?" asked Mrs. Ormerod. The reply, when it came, was rather testy.

"No. Definitely not. However, a question so manifestly dim can only have been put in one country on this benighted planet‑most of which, incidentally, I have seen during the last few hours. Dear lady, this is not Ron. "

"Well, I want to speak to Ron Ormerod," said Mrs. Ormerod, a little testily. "He's rather short, balding on top. Can you put him on, please?"

There was a pause. "Actually there does appear to be a spirit of that description hovering over here. Very well. I'll hand you over, but you must make it quick. I am attempting to avert the apocalypse."

Mrs. Ormerod and Mr. Scroggie gave each other looks. Nothing like this had happened at Madame Tracy's previous sittings. Julia Petley was rapt. This was more like it. She hoped Madame Tracy was going to start manifesting ectoplasm next.

"H‑hello?" said Madame Tracy in another voice. Mrs. Ormerod started. It sounded exactly like Ron. On previous occasions Ron had sounded like Madame Tracy.

"Ron, is that you?"

"Yes, Buh‑Beryl."

"Right. Now I've quite a bit to tell you. For a start I went to our Krystal's wedding, last Saturday, our Marilyn's eldest . . ."

"Buh‑Beryl. You‑you nuh‑never let me guh‑get a wuh‑word in edgewise wuh‑while I was alive. Nuh‑now I'm duh‑dead, there's juh just one thing to suh‑say . . ."

Beryl Ormerod was a little disgruntled by all this. Previously when Ron had manifested, he had told her that he was happier beyond the veil, and living somewhere that sounded more than a little like a celestial bun­galow. Now he sounded like Ron, and she wasn't sure that was what she wanted. And she said what she had always said to her husband when he began to speak to her in that tone of voice.

"Ron, remember your heart condition."

"I duh‑don't have a huh‑heart any longer. Remuhmember? Any­way, Buh‑Beryl . . . ?"

"Yes, Ron."

"Shut up," and the spirit was gone. "Wasn't that touching? Right, now, thank you very much, ladies and gentleman, I'm afraid 1 shall have to be getting on. "

Madame Tracy stood up, went over to the door, and turned on the lights.

"Out!" she said.

Her sitters stood up, more than a little puzzled, and, in Mrs. Ormerod's case, outraged, and they walked out into the hall.

"You haven't heard the last of this, Marjorie Potts," hissed Mrs. Ormerod, clutching her handbag to her breast, and she slammed the door.

Then her muffled voice echoed from the hallway, "And you can tell our Ron that hehasn't heard the last of this either!"

Madame Tracy (and the name on her scooters‑only driving license was indeed Marjorie Potts) went into the kitchen and turned off the sprouts.

She put on the kettle. She made herself a pot of tea. She sat down at the kitchen table, got out two cups, filled both of them. She added two sugars to one of them. Then she paused.

"No sugar for me, please, " said Madame Tracy.

She lined up the cups on the table in front of her, and took a long sip from the tea‑with‑sugar.

"Now," she said, in a voice that anyone who knew her would have recognized as her own, although they might not have recognized her tone of voice, which was cold with rage. "Suppose you tell me what this is about. And it had better be good."

– – -

A lorry had shed its load all over the M6. According to its manifest the lorry had been filled with sheets of corrugated iron, although the two police patrolmen were having difficulty in accepting this.

"So what I want to know is, where did all the fish come from?" asked the sergeant.

"I told you. They fell from the sky. One minute I'm driving along at sixty, next second, whap! a twelve‑pound salmon smashes through the windscreen. So I pulls the wheel over, and I skidded on that," he pointed to the remains of a hammerhead shark under the lorry, "and ran into that." Thatwas a thirty‑foot‑high heap of fish, of different shapes and sizes.

"Have you been drinking, sir?" asked the sergeant, less than hopefully.

"Course I haven't been drinking, you great wazzock. You can see the fish, can't you?"

On the top of the pile a rather large octopus waved a languid tentacle at them. The sergeant resisted the temptation to wave back.

The police constable was leaning into the police car, talking on the radio. ". . . corrugated iron and fish, blocking off the southbound M6 about half a mile north of junction ten. We're going to have to close off the whole southbound carriageway. Yeah."

The rain redoubled. A small trout, which had miraculously sur­vived the fall, gamely began to swim toward Birmingham.

– – -

"That was wonderful," said Newt.

"Good," said Anathema. "The earth moved for everybody." She got up off the floor, leaving her clothes scattered across the carpet, and went into the bathroom.

Newt raised his voice. "I mean, it was really wonderful. Really reallywonderful. I always hoped it was going to be, and it was."

There was the sound of running water.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Taking a shower."

"Ah." He wondered vaguely if everyone had to shower afterwards, or if it was just women. And he had a suspicion that bidets came into it somewhere.

"Tell you what," said Newt, as Anathema came out of the bath­room swathed in a fluffy pink towel. "We could do it again."

"Nope," she said, "not now." She finished drying herself, and started picking up clothes from the floor, and, unselfconsciously, pulling them on. Newt, a man who was prepared to wait half an hour for a free changing cubicle at the swimming baths, rather than face the possibility of having to disrobe in front of another human being, found himself vaguely shocked, and deeply thrilled.

Bits of her kept appearing and disappearing, like a conjurer's hands; Newt kept trying to count her nipples and failing, although he didn't mind.

"Why not?" said Newt. He was about to point out that it might not take long, but an inner voice counseled him against it. He was growing up quite quickly in a short time.

Anathema shrugged, not an easy move when you're pulling on a sensible black skirt. "She said we only did it this once."

Newt opened his mouth two or three times, then said, "She didn't. She bloody didn't. She couldn't predict that.I don't believe it."

Anathema, fully dressed, walked over to her card index, pulled one out, and passed it to him.

Newt read it and blushed and gave it back, tight‑Tipped.

It wasn't simply the fact that Agnes had known, and had expressed herself in the most transparent of codes. It was that, down the ages, vari­ous Devices had scrawled encouraging little comments in the margin.

She passed him the damp towel. "Here," she said. "Hurry up. I've got to make the sandwiches, and we've got to get ready."

He looked at the towel. "What's this for?"

"Your shower."

Ah. So it was something men and women both did. He was pleased he'd got that sorted out.

"But you'll have to make it quick," she said.

"Why? Have we got to get out of here in the next ten minutes before the building explodes?"

"Oh no. We've got a couple of hours. It's just that I've used up most of the hot water. You've got a lot of plaster in your hair."

The storm blew a dying gust around Jasmine Cottage, and holding the damp pink towel, no longer fluffy, in front of him, strategically, Newt edged off to take a cold shower.

– – -

In Shadwell's dream, he is floating high above a village green. In the center of the green is a huge pile of kindling wood and dry branches. In the center of the pile is a wooden stake. Men and women and children stand around on the grass, eyes bright, cheeks pink, expectant, excited.

A sudden commotion: ten men walk across the green, leading a handsome, middle‑aged woman; she must have been quite striking in her youth, and the word "vivacious" creeps into Shadwell's dreaming mind. In front of her walks Witchfinder Private Newton Pulsifer. No, it isn't Newt: The man is older, and dressed in black leather. Shadwell recognizes approv­ingly the ancient uniform of a Witchfinder Major.

The woman climbs onto the pyre, thrusts her hands behind her, and is tied to the stake. The pyre is lit. She speaks to the crowd, says something, but Shadwell is too high to hear what it is. The crowd gathers around her.

A witch, thinks Shadwell. They're burning a witch. It gives him a warm feeling. That was the right and proper way of things. That's how things were meant to be.

Only . . .

She looks directly up at him now, and says "That goes for yowe as welle, yowe daft old foole. "

Only she is going to die. She is going to burn to death. And, Shadwell realizes in his dream, it is a horrible way to die.

The flames lick higher.

And the woman looks up. She is staring straight at him, invisible though he is. And she is smiling.

And then it all goes boom.

A crash of thunder.

That was thunder, thought Shadwell, as he woke up, with the un­shakable feeling that someone was still staring at him.

He opened his eyes, and thirteen glass eyes watched from the vari­ous shelves of Madame Tracy's boudoir, staring out from a variety of fuzzy faces.

He looked away, and into the eyes of someone staring intently at him. It was him.

Och, he thought in terror, I'm havin' one o' them out‑o'‑yer‑body experiences, I can see mah ane self, I'm a goner this time right enough . . .

He made frantic swimming motions in an effort to reach his own body and then, as these things do, the perspectives clicked into place.

Shadwell relaxed, and wondered why anyone would want to put a mirror on his bedroom ceiling. He shook his head, baffled.

He climbed out of the bed, pulled on his boots, and stood up, warily. Something was missing. A cigarette. He thrust his hands deep into his pockets, pulled out a tin, and began to roll a cigarette.

He'd been dreaming, he knew. Shadwell didn't remember the dream, but it made him feel uncomfortable, whatever it was.

He lit the cigarette. And he saw his right hand: the ultimate weapon. The doomsday device. He pointed one finger at the one‑eyed teddy bear on the mantelpiece.

"Bang," he said, and chuckled, dustily. He wasn't used to chuck­ling, and he began to cough, which meant he was back on familiar terri­tory. He wanted something to drink. A sweet can of condensed milk.

Madame Tracy would have some.

He stomped out of her boudoir, heading toward the kitchen.

Outside the little kitchen he paused. She was talking to someone. A man.

"So what exactly do you want me to do about this?" she was ask ing.

"Ach, ye beldame," muttered Shadwell. She had one of her gentle­men callers in there, obviously.

"To be frank, dear lady, my plans at this point are perforce some­what fluid."

Shadwell's blood ran cold. He marched through the bead curtain, shouting, "The sins of Sodom an' Gomorrah! Takin' advantage of a de­fenseless hour! Over my dead body!"

Madame Tracy looked up, and smiled at him. There wasn't anyone else in the room.

"Whurrizee?" asked Shadwell.

"Whom?" asked Madame Tracy.

"Some Southern pansy," he said, "I heard him. He was in here, suggestin' things to yer. I heard him."

Madame Tracy's mouth opened, and a voice said, "Not just A Southern Pansy, Sergeant Shadwell. THE Southern Pansy."

Shadwell dropped his cigarette. He stretched out his arm, shaking slightly, and pointed his hand at Madame Tracy.

"Demon," he croaked.

"No," said Madame Tracy, in the voice of the demon. " Now, I know what you're thinking, Sergeant Shadwell. You're thinking that any second now this head is going to go round and round, and I'm going to start vomiting pea soup. Well, I'm not. I'm not a demon. And I'd like you to listen to what I have to say. "

"Daemonspawn, be silent," ordered Shadwell. "I'll no listen to yer wicked lies. Do yer know what this is?It's a hand. Four fingers. One thumb. It's already exorcised one of yer number this morning. Now get ye out of this gud wimmin's head, or I'll blast ye to kingdom come."

"That's the problem, Mr. Shadwell," said Madame Tracy in her own voice. "Kingdom come. It's going to. That's the problem. Mr. Aziraphale has been telling me all about it. Now stop being an old silly, Mr. Shadwell, sit down, and have some tea, and he'll explain it to you as well."

"I'll ne'r listen tae his hellish blandishments, woman," said Shadwell.

Madame Tracy smiled at him. "You old silly, " she said.

He could have handled anything else.

He sat down.

But he didn't lower his hand.

– – -

The swinging overhead signs proclaimed that the southbound car­riageway was closed, and a small forest of orange cones had sprung up, redirecting motorists onto a co‑opted lane of the northbound carriageway. Other signs directed motorists to slow down to thirty miles per hour. Police cars herded the drivers around like red‑striped sheepdogs.

The four bikers ignored all the signs, and cones, and police cars, and continued down the empty southbound carriageway of the M6. The other four bikers, just behind them, slowed a little.

"Shouldn't we, uh, stop or something?" asked Really Cool People.

"Yeah. Could be a pile‑up," said Treading in Dogshit (formerly All Foreigners Especially The French, formerly Things Not Working Properly Even When You've Given Them a Good Thumping, never actually No Alcohol Lager, briefly Embarrassing Personal Problems, formerly known as Skuzz).

"We're the otherFour Horsemen of the Apocalypse," said G.B.H. "We do what they do. We follow them."

They rode south.

– – -

"It'll be a world just for us," said Adam. "Everything's always been messed up by other people but we can get rid of it all an' start again. Won't that be great?"

– – -

"You are, I trust, familiar with the Book of Revelation?" said Ma­dame Tracy with Aziraphale's voice.

"Aye," said Shadwell, who wasn't. His biblical expertise began and ended with Exodus, chapter twenty‑two, verse eighteen, which concerned Witches, the suffering to live of, and why you shouldn't. He had once glanced at verse nineteen, which was about putting to death people who lay down with beasts, but he had felt that this was rather outside his jurisdiction.

"Then you have heard of the Antichrist?"

"Aye," said Shadwell, who had seen a film once which explained it all. Something about sheets of glass falling off lorries and slicing people's heads off, as he recalled. No proper witches to speak of. He'd gone to sleep halfway through.

"The Antichrist is alive on earth at this moment, Sergeant. He is bringing about Armageddon, the Day of Judgement, even if he himself does not know it. Heaven and Hell are both preparing for war, and it's all going to be very messy."

Shadwell merely grunted.

"I am not actually permitted to act directly in this matter, Sergeant. But I am sure that you can see that the imminent destruction of the world is not something any reasonable man would permit. Am I correct?"

"Aye. S'pose," said Shadwell, sipping condensed milk from a rust­ing can Madame Tracy had discovered under the sink.

"Then there is only one thing to be done. And you are the only man I can rely on. The Antichrist must be killed, Sergeant Shadwell. And you must do it."

Shadwell frowned. "I wouldna know about that," he said. "The witchfinder army only kills witches. 'Tis one of the rules. And demons and imps, o'course."

"But, but the Antichrist is more than just a witch. He‑he's THE witch. He's just about as witchy as you can get."

"Wud he be harder to get rid of than, say, a demon?" asked Shad­well, who had begun to brighten.

"Not much more," said Aziraphale, who had never done other to get rid of demons than to hint to them very strongly that he, Aziraphale, had some work to be getting on with, and wasn't it getting late? And Crowley had always got the hint.

Shadwell looked down at his right hand, and smiled. Then he hesitated.

"This Antichrist‑how many nipples has he?"

The end justifies the means, thought Aziraphale. And the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. ^[45]And he lied cheerfully and convinc­ingly: "Oodles. Pots of them. His chest is covered with them‑he makes Diana of the Ephesians look positively nippleless."

"I wouldna know about this Diana of yours," said Shadwell, "but if he's a witch, and it sounds tae me like he is, then, speaking as a sergeant in the WA, I'm yer man."

"Good, " said Aziraphale through Madame Tracy.

"I'm not sure about this killing business," said Madame Tracy her­self. "But if it's this man, this Antichrist, or everybody else, then I suppose we don't really have any choice."

"Exactly, dear lady," she replied. "Now, Sergeant Shadwell. Have you a weapon?"

Shadwell rubbed his right hand with his left, clenching and un­clenching the fist. "Aye," he said. "I have that." And he raised two fingers to his lips and blew on them gently.

There was a pause. "Your hand?"asked Aziraphale.

"Aye. 'Tis a turrible weapon. It did for ye, daemonspawn, did it not?"

"Have you anything more, uh, substantial? How about the Golden Dagger of Meggido? Or the Shiv of Kali?"

Shadwell shook his head. "I've got some pins," he suggested. "And the Thundergun of Witchfinder‑Colonel Ye‑Shall‑Not‑Eat‑Any‑Living­Thing‑With‑The‑Blood‑ Neither‑Shall‑Ye‑Use‑Enchantment‑ Nor‑Observe­Times Dalrymple . . . I could load it with silver bullets."

"That's werewolves, I believe, " said Aziraphale.

"Garlic?"

"Vampires."

Shadwell shrugged. "Aye, week I dinna have any fancy bullets any­way. But the Thundergun will fire anything. I'll go and fetch it."

He shuffled out, thinking, why do I need another weapon? I'm a man with a hand.

"Now, dear lady," said Aziraphale. " I trust you have a reliable mode of transportation at your disposal. "

"Oh yes," said Madame Tracy. She went over to the corner of the kitchen and picked up a pink motorbike helmet, with a yellow sunflower painted on it, and put it on, strapping it under her chin. Then she rum­maged in a cupboard, pulled out three or four hundred plastic shopping bags and a heap of yellowing local newspapers, then a dusty day‑glo green helmet with EASY RIDERwritten across the top, a present from her niece Petula twenty years before.

Shadwell, returning with the Thundergun over his shoulder, stared at her unbelieving.

"I don't know what you're staring at, Mr. Shadwell," she told him. "It's parked in the road downstairs." She passed him the helmet. "You've got to put it on. It's the law. I don't think you're really allowed to have three people on a scooter, even if two of them are, er, sharing. But it's an emergency. And I'm sure you'll be quite safe, if you hold on to me nice and tight." And she smiled. "Won't that be fun?"

Shadwell paled, muttered something inaudible, and put on the green helmet.

"What was that, Mr. Shadwell?" Madame Tracy looked at him sharply.

"I said, De'il ding a divot aff yer wame wi' a flaughter spade," said Shadwell.

"That'll be quite enough of that kind of language, Mr. Shadwell," said Madame Tracy, and she marched him out of the hall and down the stairs to Crouch End High Street, where an elderly scooter waited to take the two, well, call it three of them away.

– – -

The lorry blocked the road. And the corrugated iron blocked the road. And a thirty‑foot‑high pile of fish blocked the road. It was one of the most effectively blocked roads the sergeant had ever seen.

The rain wasn't helping.

"Any idea when the bulldozers are likely to get here?" he shouted into his radio.

"We're crrrrkdoing the best we crrrrk, "came the reply.

He felt something tugging at his trouser cuff, and looked down.

"Lobsters?" He gave a little skip, and a jump, and wound up on the top of the police car. "Lobsters," he repeated. There were about thirty of them‑some over two feet long. Most of them were on their way up the motorway; half a dozen had stopped to check out the police car.

"Something wrong, Sarge?" asked the police constable, who was taking down the lorry driver's details on the hard shoulder.

"I just don't like lobsters," said the sergeant, grimly, shutting his eyes. "Bring me out in a rash. Too many legs. I'll just sit up here a bit, and you can tell me when they've all gone."

He sat on the top of the car, in the rain, and felt the water seeping into the bottom of his trousers.

There was a low roar. Thunder? No. It was continuous, and getting closer. Motorbikes. The sergeant opened one eye.

Jesus Christ!

There were four of them, and they had to be doing over a hundred. He was about to climb down, to wave at them, to shout, but they were past him, heading straight for the upturned lorry.

There was nothing the sergeant could do. He closed his eyes again, and listened for the collision. He could hear them coming closer. Then:

Whoosh.

Whoosh.

Whoosh.

And a voice in his head that said, I'LL CATCH UP WITH THE REST OF YOU.

("Did you see that?" asked Really Cool People. "They flew right over it!"

"kin'ell!" said G.B.H. "If they can do it, we can too!")

The sergeant opened his eyes. He turned to the police constable and opened his mouth.

The police constable said, "They. They actually. They flew righ . . ."

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Splat.

There was another rain of fish, although of shorter duration, and more easily explicable. A leather jacketed arm waved feebly from the large pile of fish. A motorbike wheel spun hopelessly.

That was Skuzz, semi‑conscious, deciding that if there was one thing he hated even more than the French it was being up to his neck in fish with what felt like a broken leg. He truly hated that.

He wanted to tell G.B.H. about his new role; but he couldn't move. Something wet and slippery slithered up one sleeve.

Later, when they'd dragged him out of the fish pile, and he'd seen the other three bikers, with the blankets over their heads, he realized it was too late to tell them anything.

That was why they hadn't been in that Book of Revelations Pigbog had been going on about. They'd never made it that far down the motor­way.

Skuzz muttered something. The police sergeant leaned over. "Don't try to speak, son," he said. "The ambulance'll be here soon."

"Listen," croaked Skuzz. "Got something important to tell you. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse . . . they're right bastards, all four of them."

"He's delirious," announced the sergeant.

"I'm sodding not. I'm People Covered In Fish," croaked Skuzz, and passed out.

– – -

The London traffic system is many hundreds of times more com­plex than anyone imagines.

This has nothing to do with influences, demonic or angelic. It's more to do with geography, and history, and architecture.

Mostly this works to people's advantage, although they'd never believe it.

London was not designed for cars. Come to that, it wasn't designed for people. It just sort of happened. This created problems, and the solu­tions that were implemented became the next problems, five or ten or a hundred years down the line.

The latest solution had been the M25: a motorway that formed a rough circle around the city. Up until now the problems had been fairly basic‑things like it being obsolete before they had finished building it, Einsteinian tailbacks that eventually became tailforwards, that kind of thing.

The current problem was that it didn't exist; not in normal human spatial terms, anyway. The tailback of cars unaware of this, or trying to find alternate routes out of London, stretched into the city center, from every direction. For the first time ever, London was completely gridlocked. The city was one huge traffic jam.

Cars, in theory, give you a terrifically fast method of traveling from place to place. Traffic jams, on the other hand, give you a terrific opportu­nity to stay still. In the rain, and the gloom, while around you the cacophonous symphony of horns grew ever louder and more exasperated.

Crowley was getting sick of it.

He'd taken the opportunity to reread Aziraphale's notes, and to thumb through Agnes Nutter's prophecies, and to do some serious think­ing.

His conclusions could be summarized as follows:

1) Armageddon was under way.

2) There was nothing Crowley could do about this.

3) It was going to happen in Tadfield. Or to begin there, at any rate. After that it was going to happen everywhere.

4) Crowley was in Hell's bad books. ^[46]

5) Aziraphale was‑as far as could be estimated‑out of the equa­tion.

6) All was black, gloomy and awful. There was no light at the end of the tunnel‑or if there was, it was an oncoming train.

7) He might just as well find a nice little restaurant and get completely and utterly pissed out of his mind while he waited for the world to end.

8) And yet . . .

And that was where it all fell apart.

Because, underneath it all, Crowley was an optimist. If there was one rock‑hard certainty that had sustained him through the bad times‑he thought briefly of the fourteenth century‑then it was utter surety that he would come out on top; that the universe would look after him.

Okay, so Hell was down on him. So the world was ending. So the Cold War was over and the Great War was starting for real. So the odds against him were higher than a vanload of hippies on a blotterful of Owl­sley's Old Original. There was still a chance.

It was all a matter of being in the right place at the right time.

The right place was Tadfield. He was certain of that; partly from the book, partly from some other sense: in Crowley's mental map of the world, Tadfield was throbbing like a migraine.

The right time was getting there before the end of the world. He checked his watch. He had two hours to get to Tadfield, although probably even the normal passage of Time was pretty shaky by now.

Crowley tossed the book into the passenger seat. Desperate times, desperate measures: he had maintained the Bentley without a scratch for sixty years.

What the hell.

He reversed suddenly, causing severe damage to the front of the red Renault 5 behind him, and drove up onto the pavement.

He turned on his lights, and sounded his horn.

That should give any pedestrians sufficient warning that he was coming. And if they couldn't get out of the way . . . well, it'd all be the same in a couple of hours. Maybe. Probably.

"Heigh ho," said Anthony Crowley, and just drove anyway.

– – -

There were six women and four men, and each of them had a telephone and a thick wodge of computer printout, covered with names and telephone numbers. By each of the numbers was a penned notation saying whether the person dialed was in or out, whether the number was currently connected, and, most importantly, whether or not anybody who answered the phone was avid for cavity‑wall insulation to enter their lives.

Most of them weren't.

The ten people sat there, hour after hour, cajoling, pleading, prom­ising through plastic smiles. Between calls they made notations, sipped coffee, and marvelled at the rain flooding down the windows. They were staying at their posts like the band on the Titanic. If you couldn't sell double glazing in weather like this, you couldn't sell it at all.

Lisa Morrow was saying, ". . . Now, if you'll only let me finish, sir, and yes, I understand that, sir, but if you'll only . . ." and then, seeing that he'd just hung up on her, she said, "Well, up yours, snot‑face."

She put down the phone.

"I got another bath," she announced to her fellow telephone sales­persons. She was well in the lead in the office daily Getting People Out of the Bath stakes, and only needed two more points to win the weekly Coitus Interruptus award.

She dialed the next number on the list.

Lisa had never intended to be a telephone salesperson. What she really wanted to be was an internationally glamorous jet‑setter, but she didn't have the O‑levels.

Had she been studious enough to be accepted as an internationally glamorous jet‑setter, or a dental assistant (her second choice of profession), or indeed, anything other than a telephone salesperson in that particular office, she would have had a longer, and probably more fulfilled, life.

Perhaps not a very much longer life, all things considered, it being the Day of Armageddon, but several hours anyway.

For that matter, all she really needed to do for a longer life was not ring the number she had just dialed, listed on her sheet as the Mayfair home of, in the best traditions of tenth‑hand mail‑order lists, Mr. A. J. Cowlley.

But she had dialed. And she had waited while it rang four times. And she had said, "Oh, pout, another ansaphone," and started to put down the handset.

But then something climbed out of the earpiece. Something very big, and very angry.

It looked a little like a maggot. A huge, angry maggot made out of thousands and thousands of tiny little maggots, all writhing and scream­ing, millions of little maggot mouths opening and shutting in fury, and every one of them was screaming "Crowley."

It stopped screaming. Swayed blindly, seemed to be taking stock of where it was.

Then it went to pieces.

The thing split into thousands of thousands of writhing gray mag­gots. They flowed over the carpet, up over the desks, over Lisa Morrow and her nine colleagues; they flowed into their mouths, up their nostrils, into their lungs; they burrowed into flesh and eyes and brains and lights, reproducing wildly as they went, filling the room with a towering mess of writhing flesh and gunk. The whole began to flow together, to coagulate into one huge entity that filled the room from floor to ceiling, pulsing gently.

A mouth opened in the mass of flesh, strands of something wet and sticky adhering to each of the not‑exactly lips, and Hastur said:

"I needed that."

Spending half an hour trapped on an ansaphone with only Aziraphale's message for company had not improved his temper.

Neither did the prospect of having to report back to Hell, and having to explain why he hadn't returned half an hour earlier, and, more importantly, why he was not accompanied by Crowley.

Hell did not go a bundle on failures.

On the plus side, however, he at least knew what Aziraphale's message was. The knowledge could probably buy him his continued exis­tence.

And anyway, he reflected, if he were going to have to face the possible wrath of the Dark Council, at least it wouldn't be on an empty stomach.

The room filled with thick, sulphurous smoke. When it cleared, Hastur was gone. There was nothing left in the room but ten skeletons, picked quite clean of meat, and some puddles of melted plastic with, here and there, a gleaming fragment of metal that might once have been part of a telephone. Much better to have been a dental assistant.

But, to look on the bright side, all this only went to prove that evil contains the seeds of its own destruction. Right now, across the country, people who would otherwise have been made just that little bit more tense and angry by being summoned from a nice bath, or having their names mispronounced at them, were instead feeling quite untroubled and at peace with the world. As a result of Hastur's action a wave of low‑grade good­ness started to spread exponentially through the population, and millions of people who ultimately would have suffered minor bruises of the soul did not in fact do so. So that was all right.

– – -

You wouldn't have known it as the same car. There was scarcely an inch of it undented. Both front lights were smashed. The hubcaps were long gone. It looked like the veteran of a hundred demolition derbies.

The pavements had been bad. The pedestrian underpass had been worse. The worst bit had been crossing the River Thames. At least he'd had the foresight to roll up all the windows.

Still, he was here, now.

In a few hundred yards he'd be on the M40; a fairly clear run up to Oxfordshire. There was only one snag: once more between Crowley and the open road was the M25. A screaming, glowing ribbon of pain and dark light. ^[47]

Odegra. Nothing could cross it and survive.

Nothing mortal, anyway. And he wasn't sure what it would do to a demon. It couldn't kill him, but it wouldn't be pleasant.

There was a police roadblock in front of the flyover before him. Burnt‑out wrecks‑‑some still burning‑testified to the fate of previous cars that had to drive across the flyover above the dark road.

The police did not look happy.

Crowley shifted down into second gear, and gunned the accelerator.

He went through the roadblock at sixty. That was the easy bit.

Cases of spontaneous human combustion are on record all over the world. One minute someone's quite happily chugging along with their life; the next there's a sad photograph of a pile of ashes and a lonely and mysteriously uncharred foot or hand. Cases of spontaneous vehicular com­bustion are less well documented.

Whatever the statistics were, they had just gone up by one.

The leather seatcovers began to smoke. Staring ahead of him, Crowley fumbled left‑handedly on the passenger seat for Agnes Nutter's Nice and Accurate Prophecies~moved it to the safety of his lap. He wished she'd prophecied this ^[48].

Then the flames engulfed the car.

He had to keep driving.

On the other side of the flyover was a further police roadblock, to prevent the passage of cars trying to come into London. They were laughing about a story that had just come over the radio, that a motorbike cop on the M6 had flagged down a stolen police car, only to discover the driver to be a large octopus.

Some police forces would believe anything. Not the Metropolitan police, though. The Met was the hardest, most cynically pragmatic, most stubbornly down‑to‑earth police force in Britain.

It would take a lot to faze a copper from the Met.

It would take, for example, a huge, battered car that was nothing more nor less than a fireball, a blazing, roaring, twisted metal lemon from Hell, driven by a grinning lunatic in sunglasses, sitting amid the flames, trailing thick black smoke, coming straight at them through the lashing rain and the wind at eighty miles per hour.

That would do it every time.

– – -

The quarry was the calm center of a stormy world.

Thunder didn't just rumble overhead, it tore the air in half.

"I've got some more friends coming," Adam repeated. "They'll be here soon, and then we can really get started."

Dog started to howl. It was no longer the siren howl of alone wolf, but the weird oscillations of a small dog in deep trouble.

Pepper had been sitting staring at her knees.

There seemed to be something on her mind.

Finally she looked up and stared Adam in the blank gray eyes.

"What bit're you going to have, Adam?" she said.

The storm was replaced by a sudden, ringing silence.

"What?" said Adam.

"Well, you divided up the world, right, and we've all of us got to have a bit‑what bit're you going to have?"

The silence sang like a harp, high and thin.

"Yeah," said Brian. "You never told us what bit you'rehaving."

"Pepper's right," said Wensleydale. "Don't seem to methere's much left, if we've got to have all these countries."

Adam's mouth opened and shut.

"What?" he said.

"What bit's yours, Adam?" said Pepper.

Adam stared at her. Dog had stopped howling and had fixed his master with an intent, thoughtful mongrel stare.

"M‑me?" he said.

The silence went on and on, one note that could drown out the noises of the world.

"But I'll have Tadfield," said Adam.

They stared at him.

"An', an' Lower Tadfield, and Norton, and Norton Woods‑"

They still stared.

Adam's gaze dragged itself across their faces.

"They're all I've ever wanted," he said.

They shook their heads.

"I can have 'em if I want," said Adam, his voice tinged with sullen defiance and his defiance edged with sudden doubt. "I can make them better, too. Better trees to climb, better ponds, better . . ."

His voice trailed off.

"You can't," said Wensleydale flatly. "They're not like America and those places. They're really real.Anyway, they belong to all of us. They're ours."

"And you couldn't make 'em better," said Brian.

"Anyway, even if you did we'd all know," said Pepper.

"Oh, if that's all that's worryin' you, don't you worry," said Adam airily, "'cos I could make you all just do whatever I wanted‑"

He stopped, his ears listening in horror to the words his mouth was speaking. The Them were backing away.

Dog put his paws over his head.

Adam's face looked like an impersonation of the collapse of empire.

"No," he said hoarsely. "No. Come back! I commandyou!"

They froze in mid‑dash.

Adam stared.

"No, I dint mean it‑" he began. "You're my friends‑"

His body jerked. His head was thrown back. He raised his arms and pounded the sky with his fists.

His face twisted. The chalk floor cracked under his sneakers.

Adam opened his mouth and screamed. It was a sound that a merely mortal throat should not have been able to utter; it wound out of the quarry, mingled with the storm, caused the clouds to curdle into new and unpleasant shapes.

It went on and on.

It resounded around the universe, which is a good deal smaller than physicists would believe. It rattled the celestial spheres.

It spoke of loss, and it did not stop for a very long time.

And then it did.

Something drained away.

Adam's head tilted down again. His eyes opened.

Whatever had been standing in the old quarry before, Adam Young was standing there now. A more knowledgeable Adam Young, but Adam Young nevertheless. Possibly more of Adam Young than there had ever been before.

The ghastly silence in the quarry was replaced by a more familiar, comfortable silence, the mere and simple absence of noise.

The freed Them cowered against the chalk cliff, their eyes fixed on him.

"It's all right," said Adam quietly. "Pepper? Wensley? Brian? Come back here. It's all right. It's all right. I know everything now. And you've got to help me. Otherwise it's all goin' to happen. It's really all goin' to happen. It's all goin' to happen, if we don't do somethin'."

– – -

The plumbing in Jasmine Cottage heaved and rattled and showered Newt with water that was slightly khaki in color. But it was cold. It was probably the coldest cold shower Newt had ever had in his life.

It didn't do any good.

"There's a red sky," he said, when he came back. He was feeling slightly manic. "At half past four in the afternoon. In August.What does that mean? In terms of delighted nautical operatives, would you say? I mean, if it takes a red sky at night to delight a sailor, what does it take to amuse the man who operates the computers on a supertanker? Or is it shepherds who are delighted at night? I can never remember."

Anathema eyed the plaster in his hair. The shower hadn't got rid of it; it had merely dampened it down and spread it out, so that Newt looked as though he was wearing a white hat with hair in it.

"You must have got quite a bump," she said.

"No, that was when I hit my head on the wall. You know, when you‑"

"Yes." Anathema looked quizzically out of the broken window. "Would you say it's blood‑colored?" she said. "It's very important."

"I wouldn't say that," said Newt, his train of thought temporarily derailed. "Not actual blood. More pinkish. Probably the storm put a lot of dust in the air."

Anathema was rummaging through The Nice and Accurate Prophecies

"What are you doing?" he said.

"Trying to cross‑reference. I still can't be‑"

"I don't think you need to bother," said Newt. "I know what the rest of 3477 means. It came to me when I‑"

"What do you mean, you know what it means?"

"I saw it on my way down here. And don't snap like that. My head aches. I mean I saw it. They've got it written down outside that air base of yours. It's got nothing to do with peas. It's 'Peace Is Our Profession.' It's the kind of thing they put up on boards outside air bases. You know: SAC 8657745th Wing, The Screaming Blue Demons, Peace Is Our Profession. That sort of thing." Newt clutched his head. The euphoria was definitely fading. "If Agnes is right, then there's probably some madman in there right now winding up all the missiles and cranking open the launch win­dows. Or whatever they are."

"No, there isn't," said Anathema firmly.

"Oh, Yes? I've seen films! Name me one good reason why you can be so sure."

"There aren't any bombs there. Or missiles. Everyone round here knows that."

"But it's an air base! It's got runways!"

"That's just for transport planes and things. All they've got up there is communications gear. Radios and stuff. Nothing explosive at all."

Newt stared at her.

* * * * *

L ook at Crowley, doing 110 mph on the M40 heading toward Oxfordshire. Even the most resolutely casual observer would notice a number of strange things about him. The clenched teeth, for example, or the dull red glow coming from behind his sunglasses. And the car. The car was a definite hint.

Crowley had started the journey in his Bentley, and he was damned if he wasn't going to finish it in the Bentley as well. Not that even the kind of car buff who owns his own pair of motoring goggles would have been able to tell it was a vintage Bentley. Not any more. They wouldn't have been able to tell that it was a Bentley. They would only offer fifty‑fifty that it had ever even been a car.

There was no paint left on it, for a start. It might still have been black, where it wasn't a rusty, smudged reddish‑brown, but this was a dull charcoal black. It traveled in its own ball of flame, like a space capsule making a particularly difficult re‑entry.

There was a thin skin of crusted, melted rubber left around the metal wheel rims, but seeing that the wheel rims were still somehow riding an inch above the road surface this didn't seem to make an awful lot of difference to the suspension.

It should have fallen apart miles back.

It was the effort of holding it together that was causing Crowley to grit his teeth, and the biospatial feedback that was causing the bright red eyes. That and the effort of having to remember not to start breathing.

He hadn't felt like this since the fourteenth century.

– – -

The atmosphere in the quarry was friendlier now, but still intense.

"You've got to help me sort it out," said Adam. "People've been tryin' to sort it out for thousands of years, but we've got to sort it out now."

They nodded helpfully.

"You see, the thing is," said Adam, "this thing is, it's like‑well, you know Greasy Johnson."

The Them nodded. They all knew Greasy Johnson and the mem­bers of the other gang in Lower Tadfield. They were older and not very pleasant. Hardly a week went by without a skirmish.

"Well, " said Adam, "We always win, right?"

"Nearly always," said Wensleydale.

"Nearly always," said Adam, "An'‑"

"More than half, anyway," said Pepper. "'Cos, you remember, when there was all that fuss over the ole folks' party in the village hall when we‑"

"That doesn't count," said Adam. "They got told off just as much as us. Anyway, old folks are s'pposed to likelistenin' to the sound of children playin', I read that somewhere, I don't see why we should get told off 'cos we've got the wrong kind of old folks‑" He paused. "Anyway . . . we're better'n them."

"Oh, we're better'nthem," said Pepper. "You're right about that. We're better'n them all right. We jus' don't always win."

"Just suppose," said Adam, slowly, "that we could beat 'em prop­erly. Get‑get them sent away or somethin'. Jus' make sure there's no more ole gangs in Lower Tadfield apart from us. What do you think about that?"

"What, you mean he'd be . . . dead?" said Brian.

"No. Jus'‑jus' gone away."

The Them thought about this. Greasy Johnson had been a fact of life ever since they'd been old enough to hit one another with a toy railway engine. They tried to get their minds around the concept of a world with a Johnson‑shaped hole in it.

Brian scratched his nose. "I reckon it'd be brilliant without Greasy Johnson," he said. "Remember what he did at my birthday party? And Igot into trouble about it."

"I dunno," said Pepper. "I mean, it wouldn't be so interesting without ole Greasy Johnson and his gang. When you think about it. We've had a lot of fun with ole Greasy Johnson and the Johnsonites. We'd proba­bly have to find some other gang or something."

"Seems to me,"said Wensleydale, "that if you asked people in Lower Tadfield, they'd say they'd be better off without the Johnsonites or the Them."

Even Adam looked shocked at this. Wensleydale went on stoically: "The old folks' club would. An' Picky. An'‑"

"But we're the good ones . . ." Brian began. He hesitated. "Well, all right," he said, "but I bet they'd think it'd be a jolly sight less interestin' if we all weren't here."

"Yes," said Wensleydale. "That's what I mean."

"People round here don't want us or the Johnsonites," he went on morosely, "the way they're always goin' on about us just riding our bikes or skateboarding on their pavements and making too much noise and stuff. It's like the man said in the history books. A plaque on both your houses."

This met with silence.

"One of those blue ones," said Brian, eventually, "saying 'Adam Young Lived Here,' or somethin'?"

Normally an opening like this could lead to five minutes' rambling discussion when the Them were in the mood, but Adam felt that this was not the time.

"What you're all sayin'," he summed up, in his best chairman tones, "is that it wouldn't be any good at all if the Greasy Johnsonites beat the Them or the other way round?"

"That's right," said Pepper. "Because," she added, "if we beat them, we'd have to be our own deadly enemies. It'd be me an' Adam against Brian an' Wensley," She sat back. "Everyone needs a Greasy John­son," she said.

"Yeah," said Adam. "That's what I thought. It's no good anyone winning. That's what I thought." He stared at Dog, or through Dog.

"Seems simple enough to me," said Wensleydale, sitting back. "I don't see why it's taken thousands of years to sort out."

"That's because the people trying to sort it out were men," said Pepper, meaningfully.

"Don't see why you have to take sides," said Wensleydale.

"Of course I have to take sides," said Pepper. "Everyone has to take sides in something."

Adam appeared to reach a decision.

"Yes. But I reckon you can make your own side. I think you'd better go and get your bikes," he said quietly. "I think we'd better sort of go and talk to some people."

– – -

Putputputputputput, went Madame Tracy's motor scooter down Crouch End High Street. It was the only vehicle moving on a suburban London street jammed with immobile cars and taxis and red London buses.

"I've never seen a traffic jam like it," said Madame Tracy. "I won­der if there's been an accident."

"Quite possibly, " said Aziraphale. And then, "Mr. Shadwell, unless you put your arms round me you're going to fall off. This thing wasn't built for two people, you know."

"Three," muttered Shadwell, gripping the seat with one white­knuckled hand, and his Thundergun with the other.

"Mr. Shadwell, I won't tell you again."

"Ye'll have ter stop, then, so as I can adjust me weapon," sighed Shadwell.

Madame Tracy giggled dutifully, but she pulled over to the curb, and stopped the motor scooter.

Shadwell sorted himself out, and put two grudging arms around Madame Tracy, while the Thundergun stuck up between them like a chap­eron.

They rode through the rain without talking for another ten min­utes, putputputputput,as Madame Tracy carefully negotiated her way around the cars and the buses.

Madame Tracy found her eyes being moved down to the speedome­ter‑rather foolishly, she thought, since it hadn't worked since 1974, and it hadn't worked very well before that.

"Dear lady, how fast would you say we were going?" asked Aziraphale.

"Why?"

"Because it seems to me that we would go slightly faster walking."

"Well, with just me on, the top speed is about fifteen miles an hour, but with Mr. Shadwell as well, it must be, ooh, about

"Four or five miles per hour," she interrupted.

"I suppose so," she agreed.

There was a cough from behind her. "Can ye no slow down this hellish machine, wumman?" asked an ashen voice. In the infernal pan­theon, which it goes without saying Shadwell hated uniformly and cor­rectly, Shadwell reserved a special loathing for speed demons.

"In which case," said Aziraphale, "eve will get to Tadfield in some­thing less than ten hours"

There was a pause from Madame Tracy, then, "How far away is this Tadfield, anyway?"

"About forty miles."

"Um," said Madame Tracy, who had once driven the scooter the few miles to nearby Finchley to visit her niece, but had taken the bus since, because of the funny noises the scooter had started making on the way back.

". . . we should really be going at about seventy, if we're going to get there in time,"said Aziraphale. "Hmm. Sergeant Shadwell? Hold on very tightly now."

Putputputputput and a blue nimbus began to outline the scooter and its occupants with a gentle sort of a glow, like an afterimage, all around them.

Putputputputputput and the scooter lifted awkwardly off the ground with no visible means of support, jerking slightly, until it reached a height of five feet, more or less.

"Don't look down, Sergeant Shadwell, " advised Aziraphale.

". . ." said Shadwell, eyes screwed tightly shut, gray forehead beaded with sweat, not looking down, not looking anywhere.

"And off we go, then. "

In every big‑budget science fiction movie there's the moment when a spaceship as large as New York suddenly goes to light speed. A twanging noise like a wooden ruler being plucked over the edge of a desk, a dazzling refraction of light, and suddenly the stars have all been stretched out thin and it's gone. This was exactly like that, except that instead of a gleaming twelve‑mile‑long spaceship, it was an off‑white twenty‑year‑old motor scooter. And you didn't have the special rainbow effects. And it probably wasn't going at more than two hundred miles an hour. And instead of a pulsing whine sliding up the octaves, it just went putputputputput . . .

VROOOOSH.

But it was exactly like that anyway.

– – -

Where the M25, now a screaming frozen circle, intersects with the M40 to Oxfordshire, police were clustered around in ever‑increasing quan­tities. Since Crowley crossed the divide, half an hour earlier, their number had doubled. On the M40 side, anyway. No one in London was getting out.

In addition to the police there were also approximately two hun­dred others standing around, and inspecting the M25 through binoculars. They included representatives from her Majesty's Army, the Bomb Dis­posal Squad, M 15, M 16, the Special Branch, and the CIA. There was also a man selling hot dogs.

Everybody was cold and wet, and puzzled, and irritable, with the exception of one police officer, who was cold, wet, puzzled, irritable, and exasperated.

"Look. I don't care if you believe me or not," he sighed, "all I'm telling you is what I saw. It was an old car, a Rolls, or a Bentley, one of those flash vintage jobs, and it made it over the bridge."

One of the senior army technicians interrupted. "It can't have done. According to our instruments the temperature above the M25 is somewhere in excess of seven hundred degrees centigrade."

"Or a hundred and forty degrees below," added his assistant.

". . . or a hundred and forty degrees below zero," agreed the se­nior technician. "There does appear to be some confusion on that score, although I think we can safely attribute it to mechanical error of some kind, ^[49]but the fact remains that we can't even get a helicopter directly over the M25 without winding up with Helicopter McNuggets. How on earth can you tell me that a vintage car drove over it unharmed?"

"I didn't say it drove over it unharmed," corrected the policeman, who was thinking seriously about leaving the Metropolitan Police and going into business with his brother, who was resigning his job with the Electricity Board, and was going to start breeding chickens. "It burst into flames. It just kept on going."

"Do you seriously expect any of us to believe . . ." began somebody.

A high‑pitched keening noise, haunting and strange. Like a thou­sand glass harmonicas being played in unison, all slightly off‑key; like the sound of the molecules of the air itself wailing in pain.

And Vrooosh.

Over their heads it sailed, forty feet in the air, engulfed in a deep blue nimbus which faded to red at the edges: a little white motor scooter, and riding it, a middle‑aged woman in a pink helmet, and holding tightly to her, a short man in a mackintosh and a day‑glo green crash helmet (the motor scooter was too far up for anyone to see that his eyes were tightly shut, but they were). The woman was screaming. What she was screaming was this: "Gerrrronnnimooooo!"

– – -

One of the advantages of the Wasabi, as Newt was always keen to point out, was that when it was badly damaged it was very hard to tell. Newt had to keep driving Dick Turpin onto the shoulder to avoid fallen branches.

"You've made me drop all the cards on the floor!"

The car thumped back onto the road; a small voice from some­where under the glove compartment said, "Oil plessure arert."

"I'll never be able to sort them out now," she moaned.

"You don't have to," said Newt manically, "Just pick one. Any one. It won't matter."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, if Agnes is right, and we're doing all this because she's pre­dicted it, then any card picked right nowhas got to be relevant. That's logic."

"It's nonsense."

"Yeah? Look, you're even herebecause she predicted it. And have you thought what we're going to say to the colonel? If we get to see him, which of course we won't."

"If we're reasonable‑"

"Listen, I know these kinds of places. They have huge guards made out of teak guarding the gates, Anathema, and they have white helmets and real guns, you understand, which fire real bullets made of real lead which can go right into you and bounce around and come out of the same hole before you can even say 'Excuse me, we have reason to believe that World War Three is due any moment and they're going to do the show right here,' and then they have serious men in suits with bulging jackets who take you into a little room without windows and ask you questions like are you now, or have you ever been, a member of a pinko subversive organization such as any British political party? And='

"We're nearly there."

"Look, it's got gates and wire fences and everything! And probably the kind of dogs that eat people!"

"I think you're getting rather overexcited," said Anathema quietly, picking the last of the file cards up from the floor of the car.

"Overexcited? No! I'm getting very calmly worried that someone might shoot me!"

"I'm sure Agnes would have mentioned it if we were going to be shot. She's very good at that sort of thing." She began absentmindedly to shuffle the file cards.

"You know," she said, carefully cutting the cards and riffling the two piles together, "I read somewhere that there's a sect that believes that computers are the tools of the Devil. They say that Armageddon will come about because of the Antichrist being good with computers. Apparently it's mentioned somewhere in Revelations. I think I must have read about it in a newspaper recently . . ."

" Daily Mail.'Letter From America.' Um, August the third," said Newt. "Just after the story about the woman in Worms, Nebraska, who taught her duck to play the accordion."

"Mm," said Anathema, spreading the cards face down on her lap.

So computers are tools of the Devil? thought Newt. He had no problem believing it. Computers had to be the tools of somebody,and all he knew for certain was that it definitely wasn't him.

The car jerked to a halt.

The air base looked battered. Several large trees had fallen down near the entrance, and some men with a digger were trying to shift them. The guard on duty was watching them disinterestedly, but he half turned and looked coldly at the car.

"All right," said Newt. "Pick a card."

3001. Behinde the Eagle's

Neste a grate Ash hath fallen.

"Is that all?"

"Yes. We always thought it was something to do with the Russian Revolution. Keep going along this road and turn left."

The turning led to a narrow lane, with the base's perimeter fence on the left‑hand side.

"And now pull in here. There's often cars here, and no one takes any notice," said Anathema.

"What is this place?"

"It's the local Lovers' Lane."

"Is that why it appears to be paved with rubber?"

They walked along the hedge‑shaded lane for a hundred yards until they reached the ash tree. Agnes had been right. It was quite grate. It had fallen right across the fence.

A guard was sitting on it, smoking a cigarette. He was black. Newt always felt guilty in the presence of black Americans, in case they blamed him for two hundred years of slave trading.

The man stood up when they approached, and then sagged into an easier stance.

"Oh, hi, Anathema," he said.

"Hi, George. Terrible storm, wasn't it."

"Sure was."

They walked on. He watched them out of sight.

"You know him?" said Newt, with forced nonchalance.

"Oh, sure. Sometimes a few of them come down to the pub. Pleas­ant enough in a well‑scrubbed way."

"Would he shoot us if we just walked in?" said Newt.

"He might well point a gun at us in a menacing way," Anathema

"That's good enough for me. What do you suggest we do, then?"

"Well, Agnes must have known something. So I suppose we just wait. It's not too bad now the wind's gone down."

"Oh." Newt looked at the clouds piling up on the horizon. "Good old Agnes," he said.

– – -

Adam pedalled steadily along the road, Dog running along behind and occasionally trying to bite his back tire out of sheer excitement.

There was a clacking noise and Pepper swung out of her drive. You could always tell Pepper's bike. She thought it was improved by a piece of cardboard cunningly held against the wheel by a clothes peg. Cats had learned to take evasive action when she was two streets away.

"I reckon we can cut along Drovers Lane and then up through Roundhead Woods," said Pepper.

"'S all muddy," said Adam.

"That's right," said Pepper nervously. "It gets all muddy up there. We ort to go along by the chalk pit. 'S always dry because of the chalk. An' then up by the sewage farm."

Brian and Wensleydale pulled in behind them. Wensleydale's bicy­cle was black, and shiny, and sensible. Brian's might have been white, once, but its color was lost beneath a thick layer of mud.

"It's stupid calling it a milit'ry base," said Pepper. "I went up there when they had that open day and they had no guns or missiles or anythin'. Just knobs and dials and brass bands playin'."

"Yes," said Adam.

"Not much milit'ry about knobs and dials," said Pepper.

"I dunno, reely," said Adam. "It's amazin' what you can do with knobs and dials."

"I got a kit for Christmas," Wensleydale volunteered. "All electric bits. There were a few knobs and dials in it. You could make a radio or a thing that goes beep."

"I dunno," said Adam thoughtfully, "I'm thinkin' more of certain people patching into the worldwide milit'ry communications network and telling all the computers and stuff to start fightin'."

"Cor," said Brian. "That's be wicked"

"Sort of," said Adam.

– – -

It is a high and lonely destiny to be Chairman of the Lower Tadfield Residents' Association.

R. P. Tyler, short, well‑fed, satisfied, stomped down a country lane, accompanied by his wife's miniature poodle, Shutzi. R. P. Tyler knew the difference between right and wrong; there were no moral grays of any kind in his life. He was not, however, satisfied simply with being vouchsafed the difference between right and wrong. He felt it his bounden duty to tell the world.

Not for R. P. Tyler the soapbox, the polemic.verse, the broadsheet. R. P. Tyler's chosen forum was the letter column of the Tadfield Adver­tiser.If a neighbor's tree was inconsiderate enough to shed leaves into R. P. Tyler's garden, R. P. Tyler would first carefully sweep them all up, place them in boxes, and leave the boxes outside his neighbor's front door, with a stern note. Then he would write a letter to the Tadfield Advertiser.If he sighted teenagers sitting on the village green, their portable cassette players playing, and they were enjoying themselves, he would take it upon himself to point out to them the error of their ways. And after he had fled their jeering, he would write to the Tadfield Advertiseron the Decline of Morality and the Youth of Today.

Since his retirement last year the letters had increased to the point where not even the Tadfield Advertiserwas able to print all of them. In­deed, the letter R. P. Tyler had completed before setting out on his evening walk had begun:

Sirs,

I note with distress that the newspapers of today no longer feel obligated to their public, we, the people who pay your wages . . .

He surveyed the fallen branches that littered the narrow country road. I don't suppose, he pondered, they think of the cleaning up bill when they send us these storms. Parish Council has to foot the bill to clean it all up. And we,the taxpayers, pay their wages . . .

The theyin this thought were the weather forecasters on Radio Four, whom R. P. Tyler blamed for the weather. ^[50]

Shutzi stopped by a roadside beech tree to cock its leg.

R. P. Tyler looked away, embarrassed. It might be that the sole purpose of his evening constitutional was to allow the dog to relieve itself, but he was dashed if he'd admit that to himself. He stared up at the storm clouds. They were banked up high, in towering piles of smudged gray and black. It wasn't just the flickering tongues of lightning that forked through them like the opening sequence of a Frankenstein movie; it was the way they stopped when they reached the borders of Lower Tadfield. And in their center was a circular patch of daylight; but the light had a stretched, yellow quality to it, like a forced smile.

It was so quiet.

There was a low roaring.

Down the narrow lane came four motorbikes. They shot past him, and turned the corner, disturbing a cock pheasant who whirred across the lane in a nervous arc of russet and green.

"Vandals!" called R. P. Tyler after them.

The countryside wasn't made for people like them. It was made for people like him.

He jerked Shutzi's lead, and they marched along the road.

Five minutes later he turned the corner, to find three of the motor­cyclists standing around a fallen signpost, a victim of the storm. The fourth, a tall man with a mirrored visor, remained on his bike.

R. P. Tyler observed the situation, and leaped effortlessly to a con­clusion. These vandals‑he had, of course been right‑had come to the countryside in order to desecrate the War Memorial and to overturn sign­posts.

He was about to advance on them sternly, when it came to him that he was outnumbered, four to one, and that they were taller than he was, and that they were undoubtedly violent psychopaths. No one but a violent psychopath rode motorbikes in R. P. Tyler's world.

So he raised his chin and began to strut past them, without appar­ently noticing they were there, ^[51]all the while composing in his head a letter (Sirs, this evening I noted with distress a large number of hooligans on motorbicycles infesting Our Fair Village. Why, oh Why, does the govern­ment do nothing about this plague of . . .)

"Hi," said one of the motorcyclists, raising his visor to reveal a thin face and a trim black beard. "We're kinda lost."

"Ah," said R. P. Taylor disapprovingly.

"The signpost musta blew down," said the motorcyclist.

"Yes, I suppose it must," agreed R. P. Taylor. He noticed with surprise that he was getting hungry.

"Yeah. Well, we're heading for Lower Tadfield."

An officious eyebrow raised. "You're Americans. With the air force base, I suppose." (Sirs, when I did national service I was a credit to my country. I notice with horror and dismay that airmen from the Tadfield Air Base are driving around our noble countryside dressed no better than common thugs. While I appreciate their importance in defending the free­dom of the western world . . .).

Then his love of giving instructions took over. "You go back down that road for half a mile, then first left, it's in a deplorable state of disrepair I'm afraid, I've written numerous letters to the council about it, are you civil servantsor civil master.that's what I asked them, after all, who pays your wages? then second right, only it's not exactly right, it's on the left but you'll find it bends round toward the right eventually, it's signposted Porrit's Lane, but of course it isn't Pornt's Lane, you look at the ordinance survey map, you'll see, it's simply the eastern end of Forest Hill Lane, you'll come out in the village, now you go past the Bull and Fiddle‑that's a public house‑then when you get to the church (I have pointed out to the people who compile the ordinance survey map that it's a church with a spire, not a church with a tower,indeed I have written to the Tadfield Advertiser,suggesting they mount a local campaign to get the map cor­rected, and I have every hope that once these people realize with whom they are dealing you'll see a hasty U‑turn from them) then you'll get to a crossroads, now, you go straight across that crossroads and you'll immedi­ately come to a second crossroads, now, you can take either the left‑hand fork or go straight on, either way you'll arrive at the air base (although the left‑hand fork is almost a tenth of a mile shorter) and you can't miss it."

Famine stared at him blankly. "I, uh, I'm not sure I got that . . ." he began.

I DID. LET US GO.

Shutzi gave a little yelp and darted behind R. P. Tyler, where it remained, shivering.

The strangers climbed back onto their bikes. The one in white (a hippie, by the look of him, thought R. P. Tyler) dropped an empty crisp packet onto the grass shoulder.

"Excuse me," barked Tyler. "Is that your crisp packet?"

"Oh, it's not just mine," said the boy. "It's everybody's."

R. P. Tyler drew himself up to his full height. ^[52]"Young man," he said, "how would you feel if I came over to your house and dropped litter everywhere?"

Pollution smiled, wistfully. "Very, very pleased," he breathed. "Oh, that would be wonderful."

Beneath his bike an oil slick puddled a rainbow on the wet road.

Engines revved.

"I missed something," said War. "Now, why are we meant to make a U‑turn by the church?"

JUST FOLLOW ME, said the tall one in front, and the four rode off together.

R. P. Tyler stared after them, until his attention was distracted by the sound of something going clackclackclackHe turned. Four figures on bicycles shot past him, closely followed by the scampering figure of a small dog.

"You! Stop!" shouted R. P. Tyler.

The Them braked to a halt and looked at him.

"I knew it was you, Adam Young, and your little, hmph, cabal. What, might I enquire, are you children doing out at this time of night? Do your fathers know you're out?"

The leader of the cyclist turned. "I can't see how you can say it's late," he said, "seems to me, seems to me,that if the sun's still out then it's not late."

"It's past your bedtime, anyway," R. P. Tyler informed them, "and don't stick out your tongue at me, young lady," this was to Pepper, "or I will be writing a letter to your mother informing her of the lamentable and unladylike state of her offspring's manners."

"Well 'scuse us, " said Adam, aggrieved. "Pepper was just looking at you. I didn't know there was any for against looking."

There was a commotion on the grass. Shutzi, who was a particu­larly refined toy French poodle, of the kind only possessed by people who were never able to fit children into their household budgets, was being menaced by Dog.

"Master Young," ordered R. P. Tyler, "please get your‑your muttaway from my Shutzi." Tyler did not trust Dog. When he had first met the dog, three days ago, it had snarled at him, and glowed its eyes red. This had impelled Tyler to begin a letter pointing out that Dog was undoubt­edly rabid, certainly a danger to the community, and should be put down for the General Good, until his wife had reminded him that glowing red eyes weren't a symptom of rabies, or, for that matter, anything seen out­side of the kind of film that neither of the Tylers would be caught dead at but knew all they needed to know about, thank you very much.

Adam looked astounded. "Dog's not a mutt.Dog's a remarkable dog. He's clever. Dog, you get off Mr. Tyler's horrible of poodle."

Dog ignored him. He'd got a lot of dog catching‑up still to do.

"Dog," said Adam, ominously. His dog slunk back to his master's bicycle.

"I don't believe you have answered my question. Where are you four off to?"

"To the air base," said Brian.

"If that's all right with you," said Adam, with what he hoped was bitter and scathing sarcasm. "I mean, we won't want to go there if it wasn't all right with you."

"You cheeky little monkey," said R. P. Tyler. "When I see your father, Adam Young, I will inform him in no uncertain terms that . . ."

But the Them were already pedalling off down the road, in the direction of Lower Tadfield Air Base‑travelling by the Them's route, which was shorter and simpler and more scenic than the route suggested by Mr. Tyler.

– – -

R. P. Tyler had composed a lengthy mental letter on the failings of the youth of today. It covered falling educational standards, the lack of respect given to their elders and betters, the way they always seemed to slouch these days instead of walking with a proper upright bearing, juve­nile delinquency, the return of compulsory National Service, birching, flogging, and dog licenses.

He was very satisfied with it. He had a sneaking suspicion that it would be too good for the Tadfield Advertiser,and had decided to send it to the Times.

Putputput putputput

"Excuse me, love," said a warm female voice. "I think we're lost."

It was an aging motor scooter, and it was being ridden by a middle­aged woman. Clutching her tightly, his eyes screwed shut, was a raincoated little man with a bright green crash helmet on. Sticking up between them was what appeared to be an antique gun with a funnel­shaped muzzle.

"Oh. Where are you going?"

"Lower Tadfield. I'm not sure of the exact address, but we're look­ing for someone," said the woman, then, in a totally different voice she said, "His name is Adam Young."

R. P. Tyler boggled. "You wantthat boy?" he asked. "What's he done now‑no, no, don't tell me. I don't want to know."

"Boy?" said the woman. "You didn't tell me he was a boy. How old is he?" Then she said, "He's eleven.Well, I do wish you'd mentioned this before. It puts a completely different complexion on things."

R. P. Tyler just stared. Then he realized what was going on. The woman was a ventriloquist. What he had taken for a man in a green crash helmet, he now saw was a ventriloquist's dummy. He wondered how he could ever have assumed it was human. He felt the whole thing was in vaguely bad taste.

"I saw Adam Young not five minutes ago," he told the woman. "He and his little cronies were on their way to the American air base."

"Oh dear," said the woman, paling slightly. "I've never really liked the Yanks. They're really very nice people, you know.Yes, but you can't trust people who pick up the ball all the time when they play football."

"Ahh, excuse me," said R. P. Tyler, "I think it's very good. Very impressive. I'm deputy chairman of the local Rotary club, and I was won­dering, do you do private functions?"

"Only on Thursdays," said Madame Tracy, disapprovingly. "And I charge extra. And I wonder if you could direct us to‑"

Mr. Tyler had been here before. He wordlessly extended a finger.

And the little scooter went putputputputputputdown the narrow country lane.

As it did so, the gray dummy in the green helmet turned around and opened one eye. "Ye great southern pillock," it croaked.

R. P. Tyler was offended, but also disappointed. He'd hoped it would be more lifelike.

– – -

R. P. Tyler, only ten minutes away from the village, paused, while Shutzi attempted another of its wide range of eliminatory functions. He gazed over the fence.

His knowledge of country lore was a little hazy, but he felt fairly sure that if the cows lay down, it meant rain. If they were standing it would probably be fine. These cows were taking it in turns to execute slow and solemn somersaults; and Tyler wondered what it presaged for the weather.

He sniffed. Something was burning‑there was an unpleasant smell of scorched metal and rubber and leather.

"Excuse me," said a voice from behind him. R. P. Tyler turned around.

There was a large once‑black car on fire in the lane and a man in sunglasses was leaning out of one window, saying through the smoke, "I'm sorry, I've managed to get a little lost. Can you direct me to Lower Tadfield Air Base? I know it's around here somewhere."

Your car is on fire.

No. Tyler just couldn't bring himself to say it. I mean, the man had to know that, didn't he? He was sitting in the middle of it. Possibly it was some kind of practical joke.

So instead he said, "I think you must have taken a wrong turn about a mile back. A signpost has blown down."

The stranger smiled, "That must be it," he said. The orange flames flickering below him gave him an almost infernal appearance.

The wind blew towards Tyler, across the car, and he felt his eye­brows frizzle.

Excuse me, young man, but your car is on fire and you're sitting in it without burning and incidentally it's red hot in place

No.

Should he ask the man if he wanted him to phone the A.A.?

Instead he explained the route carefully, trying not to stare.

"That's terrific. Much obliged," said Crowley, as he began to wind up the window.

R. P. Tyler had to say something.

"Excuse me, young man," he said.

"Yes?"

"I mean, it's not the kind of thing you don't notice, your car being on fire.

A tongue of flame licked across the charred dashboard.

"Funny weather we're having, isn't it?" he said, lamely.

"Is it?" said Crowley. "I honestly hadn't noticed." And he reversed back down the country lane in his burning car.

"That's probably because your car is on fire," said R. P. Tyler sharply. He jerked Shutzi's lead, dragged the little dog to heel.

To The Editor

Sir,

I would like to draw your attention to a recent tendency I have noticed for today's young people to ignore perfectly sensible safety precautions while driving. This evening I was asked for directions by a gentleman whose car was . . .

No.

Driving a car that . . .

No.

It was on fire . . .

His temper getting worse, R. P. Tyler stomped the final stretch back into the village.

– – -

"Hoy!" shouted R. P. Tyler. "Young!"

Mr. Young was in his front garden, sitting on his deck chair, smok­ing his pipe.

This had more to do with Deirdre's recent discovery of the menace of passive smoking and banning of smoking in the house than he would care to admit to his neighbors. It did not improve his temper. Neither did being addressed as Youngby Mr. Tyler.

"Yes?"

"Your son, Adam."

Mr. Young sighed. "What's he done now?"

"Do you know where he is?"

Mr. Young checked his watch. "Getting ready for bed, I would assume."

Tyler grinned, tightly, triumphantly. "I doubt it. I saw him and his little fiends, and that appalling mongrel, not half an hour ago, cycling towards the air base."

Mr. Young puffed on his pipe.

"You know how strict they are up there," said Mr. Tyler, in case Mr. Young hadn't got the message.

"You know what a one your son is for pressing buttons and things," he added.

Mr. Young took his pipe out of his mouth and examined the stem thoughtfully.

"Hmp," he said. "I see," he said.

"Right," he said.

And he went inside.

– – -

At exactly that same moment, four motorbikes swished to a halt a few hundred yards from the main gate. The riders switched off their en­gines and raised their helmet visors. Well, three of them did.

"I was rather hoping we could crash through the barriers," said War wistfully.

"That'd only cause trouble," said Famine.

"Good."

"Trouble for us, I mean. The power and phone lines must be down, but they're bound to have generators and they'll certainly have radio. If someone starts reporting that terrorists have invaded the base then peo­ple'll start acting logically and the whole Plan collapses."

"Huh."

WE GO IN, WE DO THE JOB, WE GO OUT, WE LET HU­MAN NATURE TAKE ITS COURSE, said Death.

"This isn't how I imagined it, chaps," said War. "I haven't been waiting for thousands of years just to fiddle around with bits of wire. It's not what you'd call dramatic. Albrecht Durer didn't waste his time doing woodcuts of the Four Button‑Pressers of the Apocalypse, I do know that."

"I thought there'd be trumpets," said Pollution.

"Look at it like this," said Famine. "It's just groundwork. We get to do the riding forth afterwards. The proper riding forth. Wings of the storm and so on. You've got to be flexible."

"Weren't we supposed to meet . . . someone?" said War.

There was no sound but the metallic noises of cooling motorbike engines.

Then Pollution said, slowly, "You know, I can't say I imagined it'd be somewhere like this, either. I thought it'd be, well, a big city. Or a big country. New York, perhaps. Or Moscow. Or Armageddon itself."

There was another pause.

Then War said, "Where is Armageddon, anyway?"

"Funny you should ask," said Famine. "I've always meant to look it up."

"There's an Armageddon, Pennsylvania," said Pollution. "Or maybe it's Massachusetts, or one of them places. Lots of guys in heavy beards and seriously black hats."

"Nah," said Famine. "It's somewhere in Israel, I think."

MOUNT CARMEL.

"I thought that was where they grow avocados."

AND THE END OF THE WORLD.

"Is that right? That's one big avocado."

"I think I went there once," said Pollution. "The old city of Me­giddo. Just before it fell down. Nice place. Interesting royal gateway."

War looked at the greenness around them.

"Boy," she said, "did we take a wrong turning."

THE GEOGRAPHY IS IMMATERIAL.

"Sorry, lord?"

IF ARMAGEDDON IS ANYWHERE, IT IS EVERYWHERE.

"That's right," said Famine, "we're not talking about a few square miles of scrub and goats anymore."

There was another pause.

LET US GO.

War coughed. "It's just that I thought that . . . he'd be coming with us . . . ?"

Death adjusted his gauntlets.

THIS, he said firmly, IS A JOB FOR THE PROFESSIONALS.

– – -

Afterwards, Sgt. Thomas A. Deisenburger recalled events at the gate as having happened like this:

A large staff car drew up by the gate. It was sleek and official­-looking although, afterwards, he wasn't entirely sure why he had thought this, or why it sounded momentarily as though it were powered by motor­bike engines.

Four generals got out. Again, the sergeant was a little uncertain of why he had thought this. They had proper identification. What kind of identification, admittedly, he couldn't quite recall, but it was proper. He saluted.

And one of them said, "Surprise inspection, soldier."

To which Sgt. Thomas A. Deisenburger replied, "Sir, I have not been informated as to the incidence of a surprise inspection at this time, sir."

"Of course not," said one of the generals. "That's because it's a surprise."

The sergeant saluted again.

"Sir, permission to confirmate this intelligence with base command, sir," he said, uneasily.

The tallest and thinnest of the generals strolled a little way from the group, turned his back, and folded his arms.

One of the others put a friendly arm around the sergeant's shoul­ders and leaned forward in a conspiratorial way.

"Now see here‑" he squinted at the sergeant's name tag"‑Deisenburger, maybe I'll give you a break. It's a surprise inspection, got that? Surprise. That means no getting on the horn the moment we've gone through, understand? And no leaving your post. Career soldier like you'll understand, am I right?" he added. He winked. "Otherwise you'll find yourself busted so low you'll have to say 'sir' to an imp."

Sgt. Thomas A. Deisenburger stared at him.

"Private, " hissed one of the other generals. According to her tag, her name was Waugh. Sgt. Deisenburger had never seen a female general like her before, but she was certainly an improvement.

"What?"

"Private. Not imp."

"Yeah. That's what I meant. Yeah. Private. Okay, soldier?"

The sergeant considered the very limited number of options at his disposal.

"Sir, surprise inspection, sir?" he said.

"Provisionatedly classificisioned at this time," said Famine, who had spent years learning how to sell to the federal government and could feel the language coming back to him.

"Sir, affirmative, sir," said the sergeant.

"Good man," said Famine, as the barrier was raised. "You'll go a long way." He glanced at his watch. "Very shortly."

– – -

Sometimes human beings are very much like bees. Bees are fiercely protective of their hive, provided you are outside it. Once you're in, the workers sort of assume that it must have been cleared by management and take no notice; various freeloading insects have evolved a mellifluous exis­tence because of this very fact. Humans act the same way.

No one stopped the four as they purposefully made their way into one of the long, low buildings under the forest of radio masts. No one paid any attention to them. Perhaps they saw nothing at all. Perhaps they saw what their minds were instructed to see, because the human brain is not equipped to see War, Famine, Pollution, and Death when they don't want to be seen, and has got so good at not seeing that it often manages not to see them even when they abound on every side.

The alarms were totally brainless and thought they saw four people where people shouldn't be, and went off like anything.

– – -

Newt did not smoke, because he did not allow nicotine to gain entry to the temple of his body or, more accurately, the small Welsh Meth­odist tin tabernacle of his body. If he had been a smoker, he would have choked on the cigarette that he would have been smoking at this time in order to steady his nerves.

Anathema stood up purposefully and smoothed the creases in her skirt.

"Don't worry," she said. "They don't apply to us. Something's probably happening inside."

She smiled at his pale face. "Come on," she said, "It's not the O.K. Corral."

"No. They've got better guns, for one thing," said Newt.

She helped him up. "Never mind," she said. "I'm sure you'll think of a way."

– – -

It was inevitable that all four of them couldn't contribute equally, War thought. She'd been surprised at her natural affinity for modern weap­ons systems, which were so much more efficient than bits of sharp metal, and of course Pollution laughed at absolutely foolproof, fail‑safe devices. Even Famine at least knew what computers were. Whereas . . . well, hedidn't do anything much except hang around, although he did it with a certain style. It had occurred to War that there might one day be an end to War, an end to Famine, possibly even an end to Pollution, and perhaps this was why the fourth and greatest horseman was never exactly what you might call one of the lads. It was like having a tax inspector in your football team. Great to have him on your side, of course, but not the kind of person you wanted to have a drink and a chat with in the bar after­wards. You couldn't be one hundred percent at your ease.

A couple of soldiers ran through him as he looked over Pollution's skinny shoulder.

WHAT ARE THOSE GLITTERY THINGS? he said, in the tones of one who knows he won't be able to understand the answer but wants to be seen to be taking an interest.

"Seven‑segment LED displays," said the boy. He laid loving hands on a bank of relays, which fused under his touch, and then introduced a swathe of self‑replicating viruses that whirred away on the electronic ether.

"I could really do without those bloody alarms," muttered Famine.

Death absentmindedly snapped his fingers. A dozen klaxons gurgled and died.

"I don't know, I rather liked them," said Pollution.

War reached inside another metal cabinet. This wasn't the way she'd expected things to be, she had to admit, but when she ran her fingers over and sometimes through the electronics there was a familiar feel. It was an echo of what you got when you held a sword, and she felt a thrill of anticipation at the thought that this sword enclosed the whole world and a certain amount of the sky above it, as well. It lovedher.

A flaming sword.

Mankind had not been very good at learning that swords are dan­gerous if left lying around, although it haddone its limited best to make sure that the chances of one this size being wielded accidentally were high. A cheering thought, that. It was nice to think that mankind made a dis­tinction between blowing their planet to bits by accident and doing it by design.

Pollution plunged his hands into another rack of expensive electronics.

– – -

The guard on the hole in the fence looked puzzled. He was aware of excitement back in the base, and his radio seemed to be picking up nothing but static, and his eyes were being drawn again and again to the card in front of him.

He'd seen many identity cards in his time‑military, CIA, FBI, KGB even‑and, being a young soldier, had yet to grasp that the more insignificant an organization is, the more impressive are its identity cards.

This one was hellishlyimpressive. His lips moved as he read it again, all the way from "The Lord Protector of the Common Wealth of Britain charges and demands," through the bit about commandeering all kindling, rope, and igniferous oils, right down to the signature of the WA's first Lord Adjutant, Praise‑him‑all‑Ye‑works‑of‑the‑Lord‑and‑Flye‑Forni­cation Smith. Newt kept his thumb over the bit about Nine Pence Per Witch and tried to look like James Bond.

Finally the guard's probing intellect found a word he thought he recognized.

"What's this here," he said suspiciously, "about us got to give you faggots?"

"Oh, we have to have them," said Newt. "We burn them."

"Say what?"

"We burn them."

The guard's face broadened into a grin. And they'd told him En­gland was soft. "Right on!" he said.

Something pressed into the small of his back.

"Drop your gun," said Anathema, behind him, "or I shall regret what I shall have to do next."

Well, it's true, she thought as she saw the man stiffen in terror. If he doesn't drop the gun he'll find out this is a stick, and I shall really regret having to be shot.

– – -

At the main gate, Sgt. Thomas A. Deisenburger was also having problems. A little man in a dirty mack kept pointing a finger at him and muttering, while a lady who looked slightly like his mother talked to him in urgent tones and kept interrupting herself in a different voice.

"It really is vitally important that we are allowed to speak to whoever is in charge, " said Aziraphale. "I really must ask thathe's right, you know, I'd be able to tell if he was lying yes, thank you, I think we'd really achieve something if you kindly allowed me to carry onall right thank youI was only trying to put in a good word Yes! Er.You were asking him to yes all right . . . now-"

"D'yer see my finger?" shouted Shadwell, whose sanity was still Attachéd to him but only on the end of along and rather frayed string. "D'yer see it? This finger, laddie, could send ye to meet yer Maker!"

Sgt. Deisenburger stared at the black and purple nail a few inches from his face. As an offensive weapon it rated quite highly, especially if it was ever used in the preparation of food.

The telephone gave him nothing but static. He'd been told not to leave his post. His wound from Nam was starting to play up. ^[53]He won­dered how much trouble he could get into for shooting non‑American civilians.

– – -

The four bicycles pulled up a little way from the base. Tire marks in the dust, and a patch of oil, indicated that other travelers had briefly rested there.

"What're we stopping for?" said Pepper.